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This is the perfect scene for a black comedy. But the only thing black about Figgis's film is his trademarked shadows. Comedy appears to be the last thing on Figgis's mind. And for most of the time in One Night Stand the comic potential and Figgis's intentions pull the film in two different directions, tearing the structure down the middle and leaving the audience laboring for its collective breath just like Downey's AIDS patient.
There are not many actors that can look as smug as Snipes and as Max Carlyle, a successful director of television commercials from L.A., he's as smug as it gets. On a trip to New York City, Max visits his old friend Charlie (Downey). Max has recently been told that Charlie is dying and decides to reconnect with his old pal. Then, after a series of mishaps that cause Max to miss his flight back to L.A., he meets an alluring married woman, Karen (Kinski). Her husband is conveniently out of town so Max accepts her invitation to see the Julliard String Quartet. A combination of Beethoven and a botched mugging leads to an evening of fervid lovemaking. Returning home to his domineering and shallow wife Mimi (Ming-Na Wen), who shouts 'Circles, honey. Circles!' during their athletic lovemaking bouts, Max begins to look back nostalgically upon his fling in NYC. Time passes and Max has become an obnoxious boor, calling out his boss on trivialities and making portentous pronouncements like 'Television is the worst fucking thing that ever happened to America... Television is a frontal lobotomy!' A year later, with Charlie now in the final stages of his battle with AIDS, Max travels back to New York for a visit. In the hospital room, Max suddenly finds himself face to face with Karen who, by a strange coincidence, is married to Charlie's conservative and banal brother Vernon (who else but Kyle MacLachlan). Together once again, Max and Karen try to keep their distance but before long, they are in the clinch.
Figgis imbues this lumpy oatmeal with over-ripe emotionalism and elliptical vignettes. In a film like Leaving Las Vegas, his style was a perfect fit since Figgis's surly, contorted perspective seemed as if it was coming out of an alcoholic haze. But One Night Stand is more in line with his films like Liebestraum and Stormy Monday, films saddled with a style too overbearing for the story it is trying to tell. Everything in the film is thick and bleak, from the cacophony of New York, to a United Nations parade to the sensuous abandon of Charlie's farewell party.
Figgis has said about the film, 'I'm trying to present these characters in a delicate and fragile way so that the audience is sympathetic not only to Max but to his wife, to Karen and her husband Vernon.' He may have liked to present his characters that way, but that's not how they come through. Max and Karen appear to have no lives outside their passionate night. By the same token, Mimi and Vernon are nothing but stereotypical comic relief and inconsequential clichés. If One Night Stand were a '30s screwball comedy, these characters would be the ones played by Ralph Bellamy and Una Merkel.
But the most disturbing this about the film is in its utilization of death as a romantic plot device. Charlie's excruciating ordeal is turned into a narrative excuse to get Max and Karen back together again. As Charlie's condition worsens, the passion between Max and Karen intensifies and his imminent death becomes the catalyst for the two lovers' reunion. For One Night Stand, living wills should be passed out to all.
