The dating landscape in contemporary media is often lacquered with the sheen of an after-school special. The familiarity of dating apps and awkward sexual dynamics portrayed on screen can feel embarrassing and more like a hackneyed caricature of its realities: there is a reliance on the technological aspect as a trope, and the myriad of ways to visually depict texting and apps that can feel dated only months later.
Television series like Fleabag or Master of None were perhaps timely when they were released, but upon revisiting, they offer little emotional sustenance or grit when it comes to their portrayal of modern dating culture. As a single woman, viewing this kind of media served an unpleasant reminder of how terrible dating can be, and worse—it seemed as if no one really knew how to write it.
It is clear that genre is ripe to skewer, but in what direction? While I was convalescing during a bout of Covid, I quickly ran low on entertainment. A friend who was also sick joined me as we sat in our respective apartments for a simultaneous screening, thinking we were about to watch a film about a bad boyfriend. The experience turned out to be a bit like sneaking into a movie at the theater for the fun of it, and then actually sitting through the film with no roadmap to guide you.
As someone who tends to read summaries before watching any suspense or thriller, this trust in being blindly led was liberating and in a way, we were right. Fresh really is about a bad boyfriend. At this point, it is in your best interest to go back and watch the film without any further understanding of its concept, which its marketing materials coyly obscure. Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Noa, a woman in her twenties who is experiencing the relentless fatigue of modern dating.
After a bad date depicted with the derivative markers of this genre a conversation about splitting the bill, some light misogyny, rude male entitlement , she later finds herself in the grocery store where a handsome stranger named Steve Stan asks for her phone number.
