This week, I covered some photos from the One Night Only premiere, barely skimming the surface of the film’s premise. From the previews, we know that One Night Only is about an alternate-dimension America where single people can only have consensual sex for one night a year. This is the set-up for a romantic comedy involving Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro meeting on that one day and developing feelings and trying to figure out if they’ll have sex on that one day. When really, people are obsessed with the dystopian universe-logic of the “one night only” mandate. So, Vanity Fair attempted to do an explainer for the rules of this alternate-dystopia America, where premarital sex is banned and criminalized 364 days a year. Some highlights of this surprisingly informative piece:

You can only have premarital sex for 12 hours: Will Gluck’s new romantic comedy, which opens Friday, takes place in an alternate-universe USA where an authoritarian Congress has passed a mandate that outlaws premarital sex 364 days a year. On the 365th—a date the film has cleverly deemed “the One Night”—singles are permitted to have as much sex as they want, with whomever they want, for a single 12-hour period. Everyone in America is somehow cool with this, and surprisingly willing to play along.

Premarital sex is criminalized: It is literally illegal. “We wanted to go back to a time when sex was reserved for the sanctity of marriage,” a Republican-coded government official (older white guy, red tie, American flag pin on his lapel) tells a Chinese newscaster early in the film. We do not learn his name, but a defaced campaign poster shown during the end credits identifies him as Holloway. (This script, which appears to be an early draft of One Night Only, includes a character named “Senator Holloway.” It describes him as “41, beard, Botox, gives a practiced smile. He definitely does not look exactly like JD Vance.”) Anyway: Holloway—whose name, intentionally or not, invokes Senator Josh Hawley—and his cronies have decided that the best way to protect marriage is to pass a mandate outlawing premarital sex.

The LGBTQ community seems wildly uninterested in the law: Weirdly, the queer community does not seem very pressed by the no-sex mandate. Quintessa Swindell, who plays Monica Barbaro’s roommate, tells Barbaro’s character early on that she isn’t planning to go out on the One Night: “Tonight is for the straights,” she explains. “We’ve been dancing around your laws since before the Bible.”

Self-pleasure is not criminalized?? Surprisingly yes, according to a different poster in the police station—and it’s perhaps even encouraged. “Since our resolution passed,” Holloway says in that expository interview, “teen pregnancy is near zero, STIs are at record lows, and now it’s a badge of honor to be an incel.”

How is this mandate enforced? “Big Tech, baby! All Americans over the age of 18 have been implanted with “biosensors,” wrist tattoos that glow red when the wearer isn’t permitted to have sex and green when sex is permitted. Everyone gets to choose the shape of their own tattoo, because of personal liberties and free markets…. The science [on the biosensors] is slightly fuzzy. But according to a tech bro played (convincingly) by Succession’s Nicholas Braun, they “track dopamine, oxytocin and testosterone levels. So if it spikes when it’s close to another one with elevated levels, bam! It flashes red, and the authorities are alerted via 5G.”

Why would American fascists even give single people a one-night-only loophole? “The real answer: without that loophole, there would be no movie. The in-world answer: “Because that’s what sets us apart from other places,” Holloway smarmily tells the Chinese newscaster. “Here, politics require compromise. But on this night, we have made the use of protection mandatory.”

Who is the president in the world of One Night Only? We don’t know. The only time a specific president’s name is uttered is in a late scene where Maya Hawke’s character complains about the mandate, then sarcastically says, “Thanks, Obama.”

What happens if you have illegal premarital sex? If you’re single and you have sex when you’re not supposed to, you will literally go to literal jail.

It’s presented as a new normal within the film: Maybe [there were riots] at one point. By the time the movie begins, though, it’s three years into the mandate, and everyone seems to have accepted it as their new normal. You’ll see the occasional “RESIST” sign displayed in the background as the action unfolds, and graffiti that says “REPEAL;” you can also spot signs advertising an anti-mandate concert happening at Radio City Music Hall the day after the One Night. The characters grumble about the mandate, but nobody we see is actively resisting, let alone taking up arms against Holloway and his compatriots. In fact, the horseshoe-theory thesis of One Night Only seems to be that the mandate is actually doing more good than harm. “I really thought this whole thing was gonna ruin sex for me,” a sexy singer played by Charlie Gillespie tells Barbaro’s Allie near the end of the movie. “They kind of did. But at the same time, it gave it new meaning. Who do you choose to be with for this one night? Choice itself is romantic. Maybe the fascists were right about this one.”

[From Vanity Fair]

“Maybe the fascists were right about this one” – cancel Hollywood. Shut it down. How are you, a Hollywood filmmaker, creating this alternate-reality dystopian America and presenting it as A) the cutesy background for a romantic comedy and B) an advertisement for fascist policies around sexual and reproductive freedom?? This is insane!! Apparently, the film makes it clear that as long as people are married, they can do whatever and whenever, and these policies are made specifically to punish unmarried people. And yet… you would think that even within the fascist sexual politics of this alternate universe, more space would be given to what is probably a full-scale assault on LGBTQ rights and women’s rights too. Like, yes, they’re literally policing who has sex, but women are still able to work and have bank accounts and vote? Someone didn’t think this through.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images. Promotional image courtesy of IMDB.