Callum Turner | First Impressions

It’s interesting what the worlds of romantic comedy tell us. In the great Doris Day/ Rock Hudson hits of the late 50’s/ early 60s, we were shown a rich, sophisticated, vibrantly coloured world with clear rules and very rigid gender roles that the characters themselves struggled to live up to. In PILLOW TALK (Michael Gordon, 1959), Doris was a successful career woman who wore chic clothes, the latest hair-dos, and was uber-careful about sex, which some derided, but really who wouldn’t be in those pre-pill, illegal abortion days, when a pregnancy could sink one’s career and ruin one’s life? Rock was the lothario who pretended to be a gay mama’s boy to ease the conquest, embodying all the contradictions and giving life and voice to that which was taboo. Tony Randall did almost the opposite, signifying gay no matter how many marriages and divorces the plot assigned to his character.

ONE NIGHT ONLY (Will Gluck, 2026) presents a world, also using New York as setting but in the near future, 2035, where sex for unmarried people is prohibited except for one night only, and even then, they can only have sex with a condom. The government has developed this bar code which people have tattooed on their wrist and instantly communicates any infringement to the authorities. So how to turn this dystopian premise into a light romantic comedy? The film focuses on the frenzy of that night, the different ways people take advantage of it, the desperation for condoms…while our protagonists, Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro, really want something deeper. It’s a film with a great central premise, not fully or well explored (think of the kind of comedy Italians might have made of people trying to evade this rule the rest of the year). There’s a tension between the film’s attempts at being titillating, which it doesn’t really succeed at, and the fundamental prudishness, which persists in spite of the premise. The film highlights the authoritarianism of the culture but one which the leads take for granted and accept. What is meant to be a light sexy romantic comedy ends up with a gleeful acceptance of the status quo, a culture so fascistic it tries and succeeds in regulating sexual expression..

It’s a very misjudged film, by Will Gluck, the director of ANYONE BUT YOU, (Sidney Sweeney and Glen Powell are used for some good jokes). Turner and Barbaro are sexy and witty, well-handling even the physical comedy. I was also very pleased to see Molly Ringwald as Turner’s mom; and LeVar Burton as her boyfriend. Pity about the rest

Seven years ago, we disagreed with the thrust of what Mark Jenkin’s Bait had to say about the world as it is and as it ought to be, but appreciated its expressive strength. It was a film with substance. You could grapple with it. Rose of Nevada broadly conveys the same messages, but, as they derive primarily from the film’s setting and less so its plot, is less forceful and argumentative about them, requiring us to accept them in shorthand and take them as read.

Fair enough, perhaps – why make the same film twice? – but the story to which Jenkin’s perspective is here allied is of little interest, and told with insufficient clarity, populated by dull, flat characters whose developments are poorly motivated – if at all. Jenkin is certainly a visual stylist, but he shows little instinct for effective storytelling or direction of actors here, and we question the response Rose of Nevada has received from other critics, which seems inexplicably universal in its positivity.

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