Parents' Guide to One Night Stand

Genuine performances make this talky romantic drama almost worth watching. In One Night Stand the chemistry between Arashi and Lea is believable and charming. Both characters seem to be a bit wayward in their lives, both open to and looking for something better, but also both resigned to their current predicaments. The setup of attending a funeral and then a wedding prompts inevitable conversations about love, relationships, marriage, growing old, sacrifice, and being happy, but also, given the talky nature of film, too much of it feels like all the conversations could have happened without the backdrops of the funeral and the wedding. In other words, the locations or set pieces of the film (the airport, car, funeral, wedding, bar) merely serve as the next place to have the characters go, so they can have their next conversation about love, life, or what they want in the future, etc. Without these places to propel them to the next thing, the film would feel even more meandering than it already does.

Further, some viewers might take issue with everything seeming too easy for the purposes of the film and with how the film is clearly from the point of view of the guy: he returns home, the attractive woman who meets him is naturally attracted to him, they hit it off easily, they talk openly about their life and love histories, they go out drinking, they sleep together, then the trip is over with the woman crying (ostensibly) about another man leaving her for someone or something else.