I uploaded an analysis of the move FRESH from 2023 here. The script for the video is included below with minor edits to account for the change in format.

Parallellograms

Major Spoilers

• Fresh
• The Sixth Sense

Minor Spoilers

• Dog Tooth
• Synecdoche, New York

Intro

Stories can be creatively told in several, non-traditional ways. Famously, The Sixth Sense used color patterns to foreshadow plot elements, M Night Shyamalan directly stating that he used the color red to indicate the supernatural had interacted with the real world.

Dog Tooth, the beloved dark comedy about an overbearing father, used secular dance moves to tell an entire story of how the oldest daughter who had been hidden from the outside world, came to be corrupted by it.

A film that came and went without much fanfare was Fresh from 2023. While the film itself is a tale-as-old-as-time, cat-and-mouse story, it’s wrapped in creative editing choices and visuals. Some are obvious and some more subtle, but there was enough there for me to want to explore what I was seeing more deeply.

Temporal Distortion

The story of Fresh is simple: Girl can’t find love. She meets Boy who sweeps her off of her feet only to find he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He lures women in and forces them to participate in his monstrous dinner-time activities.

One of the most notable and outlandish editing choices is the film’s placement of the opening credits. Unlike other films that put their opening credits at the beginning or after the “cold open” of the story, the credits for Fresh begin at the 33 minute mark.

Like many films, Fresh is broken up into three Acts. The first follows our female protagonist, Noa, searching for love. She unexpectedly finds it in a charming man she hardly knows – someone who seems to understand her. But, as we know from the trailer, he’s lying. He’s luring her into a false sense of security. Only after this first act closes with Noa being drugged by her new boyfriend do we finally see the title card for Fresh.

In the second act, our male antagonist, Steve, is searching for love. He finds it, unexpectedly, in a charming woman he has kidnapped and brought to his home – someone he hardly knows; someone who seems to understand him. But, there’s a twist. This woman is lying. She’s luring him into a false sense of security, plotting her escape.

Steve and Noa’s stories are parallel to each other. The Title Card separates the first two acts of the film into two almost-equal narratives. Despite the second Act being longer, it follows the first almost beat for beat. The opening credits play more of a role than just acknowledging the cast and crew. They act as a narrative and tonal reset. Steve preying on Noa, the first act, is more of a cute romantic comedy. In fact, if we haven’t seen the trailer, we don’t know Steve is a predator at all. Noa preying on Steve in the second act is more of a dark comedy/thriller. The tone becomes darker. The lighting becomes darker. Even the clothes Steve wears: In the first act, his style is fairly even-keeled for the character he’s pretending to be for Noa. Blues, browns, red, denim. In the second act, he exclusively wears blacks and grays.

Act two ends almost the exact same way as Act one, thematically speaking. While in the first story, Steve has completely made Noa believe his intentions are good enough to convince her to accept a drink from him, in the second story, Noa has completely convinced Steve of her good intentions just enough for him to accept a dance from her.

In the dance scene from Act 1, Steve and Noa are completely out of sync. Despite the awkwardness, they can’t keep their hands off of each other. This is a big bonding moment for them and is ultimately when Noa decides to let her guard down.

Conversely, the dance scene from Act 2 perfectly closes the loop by inverting the first dance scene. Noa is confident. Instead of holding Steve, she keeps herself at a distance, holding her hand perfectly parallel to Steve’s as they move, mirroring the parallel narratives they have shared. When they finally do touch, we see they’re perfectky in sync, unlike before. But similar to before, this is the moment when Steve lets down his guard. They know each other and what each other wants (or, so Noa has led Steve to believe). Noa is the predator now, and she has Steve right where she wants him, just how Steve had Noa at the end of Act 1.

The trap Noa has laid closes Act 2, just as Steve’s did the act before, closing the narrative loop.

Conclusion

Unfortunately for the audience, Act 3 descends into a “you’ve seen this movie 40,000 times before” level of predictability. It’s a shame really, because I think maintaining the attention to detail paid during the first 75% of the movie would’ve improved the overall quality significantly.

With the strong tonal shift in the film, the deliberate use of color coordination, and the inversion of the dance scenes mirroring the progress of Noa’s relationship with Steve, Fresh is still worth a watch, despite the predictable ending. It certainly made me interested in checking out other things this film maker has done and will do in the future.