In One Night Only you can't have sex, but you laugh a lot The rom-com with Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro is coming to the movies

Will Gluck has done it again. After hitting the box office heights in 2023 with Everyone But You, the American director returns with another romantic comedy, once again starring two beautiful characters, Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro. One Night Only is the film in which the actors are part of a reality not so different from ours, except for a small detail: single people can only have sex once a year on a fixed day, leaving the joys of the flesh to married couples in the remaining 364.

The plot of One Night Only is an irresistible dystopian utopia

A difficult assumption to believe, on which Travis Braun built his screenplay. Which seems like the rom-com version of the horror Doomsday in which everyone is allowed to plunder and assassinate once a year, but whose dubious social and legislative nature still manages to work and immerse viewers in that one night in which the story is set - and in which, thank God, this time no one gets hurt (more or less). The speculations about the reason for the strange decree are left out of the encounter between the protagonists (we talk about impositions against free love, about freedom on a larger scale, in short, a sort of conservatism tending to totalitarianism), who become the beating heart of Gluck's film but, above all, what is enough for viewers to get in touch with the story even with its blurry contours.

Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, the chemistry between the protagonists

Turner and Barbaro are therefore the guiding axes that are intertwined in One Night Only and who are entrusted with the task of making the story plausible to the public. And they succeed even though they are not Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney from Everyone But You, making you wonder what feedback they will be able to get at the box office given their less vertiginous popularity, but they are still involved and fascinating to the point of having nothing to envy their colleagues, establishing an excellent harmony between them.

Will Gluck's humor

Just like Everyone But You, as well as a distinctive feature of Gluck's filmography, it is the comedy that in this case does not want to be less than the romantic part. There are those who say that to make someone fall in love you have to make them laugh and the director knows this well since he loads the humorous part to make sure that the audience can't wait for the two protagonists to end up together, but even more so you wait for yet another unlikely twist or the next joke hidden around the corner. It is the 'com' that overcomes the 'Roma', because sentimentality is an important weapon, but a couple that works is the one that knows how to laugh together.

Love at the time of prohibitions: couple dynamics in the film

If Braun and Gluck are credited with finding the right fit in this improbable world in which sex is not a taboo, but literally a ban, it is then Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner who must be recognized for their enthusiastic and lively participation in One Night Only, which they share with the public. Accompanied in real life by two other beauties, with Turner fresh out of his marriage to Dua Lipa and Barbaro romantically linked to the British Andrew Garfield, in their roles as Owen and Allie the performers wonder about love, what it means to consume it and what is left after a night spent together.

Why One Night Only is the new romantic comedy you can't miss

Romantic to the core, Allie and Owen are fawns lost in a valley of thirsty wolves, albeit not denying their carnal instincts. And in this meeting-confrontation that they run into, they will fight for a condom (to be used with other people), they will be escorted by the police and they will attend exclusive parties with amazing stars, the protagonists will always be able to maintain their own center of gravity that will make them bare with each other - and not in the way you might think. A comedy that loves sex, love and romance. But that, first of all, loves to be a comedy.