Fresh­man Year

Amid a sea of red cups and a dance floor filled with drunk­en­ly sway­ing bod­ies, a boy and a girl lock eyes across the room. All the famil­iar genre clichés are here, and yet Coop­er Raiff’s Fresh­man Year feels sur­pris­ing­ly fresh. More ground­ed and authen­tic than many of its pre­de­ces­sors, this is a dis­arm­ing­ly ten­der rom-com that will sure­ly res­onate with younger viewers.

Griev­ing the fresh­man expe­ri­ence he dreamed of, Alex (Raiff) is debil­i­tat­ing­ly home­sick and strug­gling to adjust to the col­lege lifestyle. Sit­ting silent­ly in his dorm, he cuts a lone­ly fig­ure. That is, until he secures an invite to the Shit­house fraternity’s par­ty. Here he meets sopho­more Mag­gie (Dylan Gelu­la), the first per­son he’s shared a real con­nec­tion with at col­lege. The film focus­es on the pair’s con­cen­trat­ed time togeth­er, from their mid­night escapades through to the fol­low­ing morning’s awkwardness.

The empa­thy with which Raiff regards both pro­tag­o­nists is imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent. Dis­solv­ing the sug­ar coat­ing of the Amer­i­can col­lege movie, Fresh­man Year finds poignan­cy in real­is­tic moments. When Alex and Mag­gie are hook­ing up, he sud­den­ly asks to stop. So they do. Instead of con­tin­u­ing straight away, they talk. It is a refresh­ing scene that lends itself to the wider impli­ca­tion of the film being an in-touch por­trait of Gen Z.

This is a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal work from the 23-year-old writer/​director, and cer­tain moments feel so lived-in that there’s no doubt he’s said these words before. Raiff’s script gives Mag­gie plen­ty to say, too. While Alex is a more sen­si­tive soul who craves a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship, Mag­gie is more unfussy and prag­mat­ic when it comes to mat­ters of the heart. As the pair grow more famil­iar Rachel Klein’s lens push­es clos­er. Dur­ing a mid­night hike they pause and sit cross-legged on the dirt. Sud­den­ly, the col­lege stu­dents look more like chil­dren. Soft light illu­mi­nates their open expres­sions as they pon­der their tran­si­tion into adult­hood and bick­er over the pur­pose of college.

Earn­ing some of the film’s most earnest laughs, Maggie’s trio of friends deserved more sub­stan­tial screen time. Else­where, Alex’s room­mate (Logan Miller) has his own wannabe stand-up come­di­an sto­ry­line that makes for a more con­ven­tion­al col­lege nar­ra­tive thread than Alex’s for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence. Over­all, this won­der­ful­ly promis­ing debut from Raiff trans­pos­es per­son­al expe­ri­ence bril­liant­ly and show­cas­es the filmmaker’s tal­ent both in front of and behind the camera.