Fresh Review

Like every year, a short season arrives where the high temperatures are so unbearable that the brain is at a minimum and asks for things that do not require much effort, just having a fun time. And today's movie , despite the fact that it had been released for a while, I hadn't had the chance to watch it until now, at which point it seemed like the perfect option. I'm talking about Fresh.

After failed online dates, Noa is about to throw in the towel on the idea of ​​meeting someone until she runs into Steve at a supermarket. After this pleasant meeting, both agree to a date where the relationship seems to be going further. Steve proposes to Noa a little romantic getaway where Noa will discover the unusual appetites of her new partner.

As much as its premise suggests that it is a thriller that later completely embraces terror, it is appreciated that during the first half hour the filmtakes itself as an indie romantic comedy that deals with the difficulties that can arise as a result of dating through certain Apps, especially the fear of some people or profiles that are in said applications and that with a couple of clicks they can generate great discomfort; the conflict that the search for the most romantic love can cause if you cannot even generate an emotional connection or if it is possible to meet someone out of nowhere and generate that connection almost instantly. This reflection allows giving wings to the main and secondary characters and makes the viewer create a somewhat deeper bond with them due to the familiarity of the situations and the more sympathetic tone of comedy that it proposes.

The tone begins to darken as Steve bursts into Noa's life. The more she gets to know Steve, some alarm bells start to go off for good reason. And it is that in a world where everyone's life is focused to a greater or lesser extent on social networks, the absence of them is generally a good reason to distrust. For this reason, once the half hour arrives, Steve shows his true face, becoming a nightmare for Noa, opening an interesting melon that not only do we have to distrust relationships created through mobile phones to a certain extent, because the danger of striking up a relationship with a chance encounter is also highly plausible. From that moment on, the initial romantic comedy takes on that aspect of an unhealthy thriller, but in its own strange way, it does not abandon the comic tone that has accompanied thetape until now, being the credits in the middle of the film a good example of the casual tone where the clearest references would be American Psycho and Hannibal , only from a more feminine perspective with the horrors that this angle supposes.

Perhaps the radical break from one genre to another can catch more than one by surprise and the truth is that the mixture of genres does not always end up flowing with all the naturalness that the story requires, but it does result in a strange hybrid that It doesn't cut back on violence and show how dark the situation is but always with a black comedy tone (with a quite eclectic and acid soundtrack that contributes to this feeling) that makes the whole not feel excessively unbearable or heavy . In fact, once that first hour is over there is even more intrigue to know what direction the characters will take and how complicated things can get, leaving the viewer intrigued until the last minute.

Because Noa and Steven, in addition to being the two main characters, are also less complex characters to unravel, having actors capable of capturing those nuances and always being in accordance with the indicated tone is decisive. And although Sebastian Stan knows how to get the most out of Steven by drawing the line between the sociopath and the charming boy from the street, who is the absolute protagonist of the film is Daisy Edgar-Joneslike Noa, a girl who could be the avatar of any other girl because of her desire for independence, wanting to do things right, rejecting that idea of ​​romantic love but at the same time not being able to avoid looking for it and knowing how to play the game perfectly. such a dangerous game in which she gets involved with Steven, creating a character with many edges and all of them being fascinating.

In summary, it is a very entertaining film that, within its macabre revelation and pessimistic approaches, manages to always maintain a latent black humor that gives lightness to the whole and leaves the viewer with a good taste in the end.