{"id":2060,"date":"2026-08-14T11:40:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T11:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=2060"},"modified":"2026-08-14T11:40:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T11:40:47","slug":"the-dystopia-of-modern-singlehood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=2060","title":{"rendered":"The Dystopia of Modern Singlehood"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The bars are flooded with single people dressed in their sexiest getups and looking vaguely uncomfortable. Each of them is smiling a little too wide, trying a little too hard: They want to leave with one of these strangers, stat. Pair off too fast, and they might get stuck with someone insufferable; wait too long, and they might ride the subway home alone at 3 a.m., trying not to stare at the happy couples sloppy-French-kissing.<\/p>\n

Read more Atlantic Trivia: Last Call!<\/a><\/p>\n

Quick: Is this the plot of One Night Only<\/i>, or is this a random Friday night in a major city?<\/p>\n

The new film by Will Gluck, who also directed such rom-com smashes as Easy A<\/i> and Anyone but You<\/i>, follows a decidedly bonkers premise: The U.S. government has outlawed premarital sex. It uses biosurveillance to enforce the ban, tracking people\u2019s dopamine, serotonin, and testosterone levels and alerting law enforcement when two singles show hormone spikes at the same time. The only exception is during one 12-hour window every year: a night when unmarried horndogs run wild, dry humping in the streets like 17-year-olds. Owen (played by Callum Turner) thinks he\u2019ll spend the evening with his girlfriend\u2014until she announces that she wants to embrace her one chance to \u201cexplore,\u201d meaning sleep with someone else. (He then decides to do some exploring of his own.) Allie (Monica Barbaro) begrudgingly goes out with her friend to find a partner for the night\u2014until that friend immediately splits with a guy she just met, leaving Allie alone in a sea of deeply off-putting suitors.<\/p>\n

One Night Only<\/i> is obviously not a work of realism, even when you ignore the questionable science. For one thing, if strangers in bars talked to one another this much, America might not be in a romance slump. The vibes in this fictional Manhattan are exuberantly randy\u2014unlike in the world we actually occupy, where Gluck reportedly had to cut nudity out of the film because test audiences reacted so negatively to it. When people can have sex only one night a year, the film implies, they lust hard. (\u201cMaybe the fascists were right about this one,\u201d a peripheral character offers.)<\/p>\n

But One Night Only <\/i>does capture something true about the anxieties and pressures of modern singlehood. The prospects can seem both abundant and astoundingly unappealing. Not trying feels like missing an opportunity, but trying<\/i> might be worse; Allie wants a real connection but doesn\u2019t assume it will be easy to find. And she\u2019s skeptical that a fling could be all that fun if it\u2019s with a person she\u2019s not excited about. The situation isn\u2019t fair: Although their married friends get to have sex whenever they please, Allie and Owen have to go through enough trials and humiliations to fill a 102-minute run time. This is, unfortunately, a completely realistic inequity. Researchers have found that single people who say they\u2019re sexually satisfied tend to report greater well-being. But only about 15 to 30 percent of singles are sexually active at all: no ban needed to keep the partnerless masses celibate.<\/p>\n

The movie is suffused with a sense of loneliness: Allie and Owen always seem to be walking solo down the street or making their way through crowds who don\u2019t register their existence. But they\u2019re not isolated just because they\u2019re looking for companionship. The sense of alienation is also from a society designed by and for couples. In the real United States, single people tend to pay much more for essentials such as rent and groceries. They miss out on tax breaks, health-care benefits, and a bevy of other perks afforded to married couples. Meanwhile, they feel pressured to shell out on dating-app subscriptions, events, and fancy dinners if they ever want to stop<\/i> paying the \u201csingles tax.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump Delivers a Win for Crooks<\/a><\/p>\n

The movie\u2019s alternate U.S. isn\u2019t so different, in this way: Again and again, the characters are confronted with attempts to either penalize or cash in on their singlehood. A price-gouging store owner sells her last remaining condom for $200. Dating-app scammers lure vulnerable marks. K-Y salespeople push free samples on the street. Ads across the city target singles (\u201cYou\u2019ve been training for this one night,\u201d Equinox taunts; \u201cGet lingual for the one night,\u201d Duolingo urges). You get the sense that Allie and Owen are in a rat race: scurrying around and trying to find their piece of cheese but trapped in a maze by authorities who inhibit and exploit them.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s singles against the world\u2014and also against one another. The people Allie and Owen come across seem to be either lecherously sizing them up or treating them poorly (or some combination of the two). The protagonists themselves have an adversarial relationship: a rom-com trope, but in this case, it is explained only by the fact that Owen throws up near<\/i> Allie\u2019s shoes when they first meet. (And who would mind so much, really, if Callum Turner vomited in their proximity? Especially on a night like this?) The two proceed to deceive each other, insult each other\u2019s appearances, and abandon each other in precarious situations. There\u2019s no solidarity. No one in this movie even seems particularly nice.<\/p>\n

In the end, One Night Only<\/i> doesn\u2019t have much to say about a fascistic government\u2019s overreach or the pleasures and disappointments of casual sex. It\u2019s more of an abstract portrait\u2014an evocation of how singlehood can feel<\/i>. The screenwriter Travis Braun has said as much. \u201cI set out to write a movie,\u201d he told The Hollywood Reporter<\/i>, \u201cabout the circus that is modern dating.\u201d A circus is exactly what he depicts: a chaotic, ridiculous affair, full of amusing characters performing and vying for attention, never quite masking an unmistakable whiff of sadness.<\/p>\n

If the movie is more goofy than profound, that may be the point. In Braun\u2019s script, the merciless obstacle course of singlehood seems just absurd. One Night Only<\/i> is one of a whole slate of pointedly unsexy sex comedies that have been released in the past few months; The Invite<\/i>, The Drama<\/i>, Pillion<\/i>, and I Want Your Sex <\/i>are all, in their own ways, send-ups of passion gone awry. They\u2019re hardly the first to juice awkwardness and romantic missteps for laughs. But most of these films never even depict sex; they\u2019re more about the absence of chemistry than the survival of it despite the odds. Perhaps we\u2019ve hit the point when modern romance is so cringe that it\u2019s merely camp.<\/p>\n

One Night Only <\/i>goes one step further, in that it ends up feeling genuinely sex-negative; Gluck and Braun\u2019s empathy for their protagonists is all mixed up with judgment toward their background characters\u2019 formidable libidos. The film has been criticized for being prudish and regressive, and I can\u2019t say I disagree. But maybe it\u2019s just taking the perspective of its viewers\u2014many of whom are skeptical of sex, cynical about courtship, and not in the mood to celebrate free love. The movie presents a dystopia, after all: It\u2019s supposed to feel grim. That might be the most resonant part about it.<\/p>\n

Read more Longing for a Time Before Smartphones<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The plot of <em>One Night Only <\/em>is extremely silly. 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