One Night Only: Opens all doors, but does not cross any

Who would think to produce a movie in which to make love is allowed only if married and, for one night a year, the rule is erased to grant momentary freedom?

The story then begins with a strong political side, with sarcasm and ideas that could become really strong and important. But you lose exactly when the two protagonists enter the scene: Owen and Allie, played by Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro.

The best way to describe it is with two English words that I love: build-up and payoff. One Night Only is almost all build-up. Introducing a dystopian world, it suggests protests, shows the Mandate as a controversial law, puts on stage a policeman who openly defends the decree because it represents authority, lets glimpse citizens who are not completely in agreement with the system.

There are sarcastic jokes, Obama is mentioned, we talk about homosexual relationships and couples, but nothing really comes to a conclusion. The film continues to open doors that don’t cross, as if it wanted us to take that world seriously until the point necessary to make the love story work.

Throughout the film we see the two protagonists continue to meet while, at the same time, they stumble into a series of human cases. And it is precisely thanks to this race against time that emerges one of the few really successful concepts: the comment on contemporary dating. That reading really exists. The film talks about the pressure to find someone, the feeling that time is running out, the intimacy almost transformed into a performance.

To save the film from the zero stars are above all photography and direction. Callum Turner has an American accent that I personally found very constructed, almost caricatured at some times, but after two hours it seemed obvious that the main problem was the material he had in his hand. There are dialogues that seem to come out of a never rewritten draft.

The infamous bubble wrap scene is one of those moments when you sincerely ask yourself: someone read this page, someone approved it, someone turned it... and nobody thought to cut it?

The real experiment, however, was to talk about it later. The most interesting part came out of the cinema: my roommate, single woman in London, told me "I felt seen". And I think he's right. The moments of the film that show the parties and how men try to approach are realists, only shown badly.

On the other hand, I live the cinema as something to analyze as well as to look at, I kept wondering what would happen after every narrative choice. And that's where the film divides: you can get out of it thinking you saw a funny rom-com and feel represented, or you can get out of it by asking back that time of your life.

My final vote is therefore 2.5/5. It is not the terrible film I imagined: it is a film with a much better direction than its screenplay, some interesting ideas, several scenes and a world that deserved much more trust from the same authors.

The only really perfect payoff? Pizza. I still want pizza.