In a word, Fresh is deranged. The debut film from Mimi Cave, which premiered a few months ago at Sundance is twisted and utterly disturbing most of the way through, but conveyed with a gleefully dark humour that ‘deranged’ seems its’ best descriptor. It was one of the big movies (the other being After Yang) that it seemed everyone out of Sundance was talking about, and I assumed this meant because of how great, unexpected and “fresh” that it was. I now understand that shock is perhaps more likely the reason for its’ sensationalism -Cave certainly finds interesting ways to make her audience uncomfortable.
This isn’t to disparage its’ exceptional qualities, Fresh is certainly smarter and more interesting than your average horror flick of this nature, particularly in how it straddles the conventions of romantic-comedy. Relative newcomer Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Noa, a young woman without much luck on the dating scene who happens to meet Steve (Sebastian Stan), a charming attractive man with whom she strikes up an instant connection. They bond at a bar, they karaoke together, they have sex and go on a weekend getaway -at which point the tables flip spectacularly. This is all preface, the movie indicating as much with its’ title card and opening credits coming a full half hour in (trying to give Drive My Car a run for its’ money, I see). It’s a twist deftly played and yet brilliantly set up, and it does require spoiling if the movie is to be discussed in any meaningful capacity.
Steve is a cannibal who kidnaps women to harvest and sell by the body part to grotesque wealthy patrons: “the one-percent of the one-percent” he says. What’s perhaps more of a shock than this reveal though is how little his demeanour and personality is distinct by it -he maintains that same charisma, that same attitude -even that same affection for Noa, whom he talks to about eating people with the same casual candour as he’d earlier discussed his family back in Texas. Suddenly all of it is rendered unsettling, the lack of any notable red flags their own red flag. I’d heard the film called a horror movie about dating and I don’t know that that’s entirely accurate (the film loses interest in the conventions of dating at about the time Noa finds herself chained to a wall), but Cave does play around with the themes and iconography of romantic-comedy a fair bit, warping them in perverse ways. Her music choices reflect this, the recurring motif of the Golden Girls theme as Noa’s ringtone, or Steve dancing to Animotion’s “Obsession” while preparing to harvest a human leg -light poppy touches that deeply contrast the subject matter yet evoke any number of clichés of the rom-com format. Consider too, the second round meet-cute over Noa’s supposed curiosity at the taste of human flesh, how Steve sincerely entertains this and how it is written with the kind of repartee reserved for the like of Nora Ephron characters -and that it comes to define their relationship for the back end of the film.
Of course what drives this disturbing dynamic and gives it its’ efficacy is the way the movie illustrates its’ material. Even before the reveal, Cave lingers intimately on her characters’ bodies, their skin, their faces -and its’ all visual language we’re used to as constituent of sexuality, romance, closeness. But like everything it is soon turned on its’ head. The meat Steve works with is shot with a similar delicacy, as though it is the height of fine dining (the meatballs he serves Noa look perfectly appetizing -a harrowing thought), interspersed with flashes of the elite clientele consuming it in high end settings. But their consumption is still slovenly, gnarled, and stomach-churning –the context making the very act of eating disgusting. At once it seems to reflect both the perspectives of Noa and Steve.
It’s bold of Cave to do such a thing, and she’s not shy about flexing her filmmaking muscle right out the gate. She develops tension pretty well through the precedent Noa finds herself in. Separated by a thin wall is another prisoner Penny (Andrea Bang) with whom she forms a relationship, and even further down is a third captive psychologically too far-gone –forming an eerie trajectory for Noa’s own condition, something exacerbated by Steve’s capacity for premature mutilation. Outside of narrative though Cave also makes a series of stark choices in her pacing and tone, and her visuals. She colours much of the film in warm glowing hues to serve her assortment of contrasts, backs up her morbid humour through not only music but slick editing –this movie has one of the best spin match cuts I’ve ever seen. Bits of her styling may feel derivative, a late-film dance sequence is lit and choreographed perhaps a bit too closely to a similar scene in Ex Machina, but there’s enough real creativity there to even things out. Certainly she has the taste (no pun intended) for this vivid imagery and a gruesome sense of irony.
Unfortunately, the film isn’t as tight as it ought to be, the detours into the suspicions of Noa’s friend Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs) aren’t very substantive or compelling, and feel like a weaker version of the Lil Rel subplot from Get Out. The film would have been much better served giving some of this time over to Steve’s wife, played by Charlotte Le Bon in a rather thankless role that for whatever reason Cave decided not to expand on (and there’s a curious, disturbing implication there well worth delving into). Instead, she mostly just facilitates one major plot beat (and it could have easily been achieved another way) before becoming completely superfluous -a background actor with no real stakes behind her. One of the functions she is put to is to drag out the climax, which is overlong and stuffed with false endings eating away at whatever tension or catharsis was built into it. Everyone is palpably tired by the time it does conclude, where it could have landed more solidly had it cut out some ten minutes earlier than it does.
It sputters at the end certainly, and yet Fresh is still rather impressive. I appreciate the swings it takes, especially as a debut, most of them working out fairly well. And there is something provoking about its’ attitude to relationships and dating, sure as it is to dissuade its’ audience from either of those things (or at least the heterosexual variety). Jones is a promising discovery and Stan fits perfectly this charismatic yet horrifying stud. It doesn’t all fit together seamlessly, but the effort is enough to stick in your mind, to leave an aftertaste that I’m sure Mimi Cave would find just delectable.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment