Fresh – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Fresh – first-look review

22 Jan 2022

Words by Hannah Strong

Two people, a man and a woman, sitting at a wooden table in a dimly lit room, engaged in conversation. Warm lighting from candles and a chandelier creates a cosy, intimate atmosphere.
Two people, a man and a woman, sitting at a wooden table in a dimly lit room, engaged in conversation. Warm lighting from candles and a chandelier creates a cosy, intimate atmosphere.
It’s a clas­sic tale of boy eats girl in Mimi Cave’s direc­to­r­i­al debut, but the flavour pro­file is off.

It’s a tale as old as time: girl meets boy, girl dates boy, girl dis­cov­ers boy is secret­ly butcher­ing women and sell­ing their flesh to an elite group of can­ni­bals, girl has doubts about boy’s char­ac­ter. First-time direc­tor Mimi Cave makes the tran­si­tion from music videos to fea­tures with this gory take on mod­ern dat­ing, star­ring Nor­mal Peo­ple break­out Daisy Edgar-Jones as Noa, an unlucky-in-love twen­tysome­thing whose super­mar­ket meet-cute with hand­some stranger Steve (Sebas­t­ian Stan) cul­mi­nates in her kidnapping.

Steve calm­ly explains to Noa that he’s a butch­er, of sorts, and that he intends to slow­ly carve parts of her body off and ship them to his well-paay­ing clien­tele. Noa seems to get over this quite quick­ly, because hey – he might be a can­ni­bal, but Steve’s got his own home and he’s cute, which are two qual­i­ties hard to ignore in the mil­len­ni­al hellscape that is con­tem­po­rary romance. Steve takes a shine to Noa too, with a fel­low pris­on­er point­ing out to her that none of the oth­er vic­tims slept with Steve pri­or to their capture.

Get more Lit­tle White Lies

This is pre­sent­ed is mean­ing Noa is spe­cial in some way, but as we nev­er real­ly learn much about her it’s hard to say why exact­ly Steve becomes so fix­at­ed on his lat­est cash cow. Not only that, it’s dif­fi­cult to under­stand why Noa’s best friend Mol­lie (Jojo T. Gibbs) cares so much about her, giv­en that Noa shows pre­cious lit­tle in inter­est in any­one but herself.

A slick, beau­ti­ful­ly-pro­duced film, Fresh ben­e­fits from some excel­lent inte­ri­ors (say what you want about psy­chopaths, they can dec­o­rate the hell out of a lair) but its styl­is­tic flour­ish­es can’t make up for lack­lus­tre char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. Cer­tain obser­va­tions about the pit­falls of mod­ern dat­ing feel out­dat­ed, which might be the result of lean­ing on a cul­ture that changes so rapid­ly, but most­ly the stakes feel strange­ly low for a film about cor­po­rate cannibalism.

By the time the film reach­es its inevitable bloody cli­max, there’s pre­cious lit­tle rea­son to root for any­one involved. Cave cer­tain­ly has an eye for aes­thet­ics, but Fresh attempts to find a mid­dle ground between rela­tion­ship satire and gross-out hor­ror, becom­ing a bloody dis­ap­point­ment in the process.

You might like

Collage depicting crowd crossing street, person standing in large tent, clouds and sky in background, bold colours and geometric shapes.
Festivals

Time in the Flesh: A Queer East Correspondence

by Jae Huang, Soumya Sharma

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Queer East Film Fes­ti­val, our final pair from this year’s Emerg­ing Crit­ics pro­gramme reflect on their experience.
Two people in casual clothes, one wearing a red top, chatting outdoors; people sitting at tables indoors, some playing musical instruments.
Festivals

Temporal Sensibilities: Queering timelines and nostalgia

by Yuki Yoshikawa, Pear Nual­lak

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Queer East Film Fes­ti­val, our sec­ond pair from the Emerg­ing Crit­ics cohort offer their thoughts on this year’s programme.
A collage of scenes from a film, including a man in traditional Japanese dress, a woman in a revealing dress, and various other characters in action.
Festivals

This Must Be the Place: A Queer East Correspondence

by Qinghan Chen, Lydia Leung

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Queer East Film Fes­ti­val, this year’s Emerg­ing Crit­ics cohort offer their respons­es to the film programme.
Silhouette of a person seated on a bench in a misty, blue-toned environment.
Festivals

Resurrection – first-look review

by Hannah Strong

Bi Gan’s third fea­ture is an epic in every sense of the word, tak­ing view­ers on a sprawl­ing odyssey through cinema.
Man in a flat cap, wearing a brown coat, standing in a snowy street next to a parked car.
Festivals

The Mastermind – first-look review

by Hannah Strong

An art theft spells dis­as­ter for Josh O’Con­nor in Kel­ly Reichardt’s excel­lent Viet­nam-era heist dramedy.
A young woman wearing a red jacket and shorts stands in the middle of a crowd of people lying on the ground.
Festivals

The Wave – first-look review

by Rafa Sales Ross

Sebastián Lelio’s musi­cal take on Chile’s MeToo move­ment is a mis­judged gum-smack­ing mess.