Dreaming of the sort of romance you see in classic Hollywood rom-coms, the boys in her class were always going to come up short for college senior Blake Conway, and Frustrated with swiping for dates, the aspiring writer declares “Romance is dead” in the college newspaper.
While modern courtship isn’t cutting it for Blake, as a sex columnist, the banal stories aren’t making the grade for her editor either. Refusing to print her column until she has something meaningful to say, with one eye on a prize fund for gonzo journalism, Blake jumps in two footed in the other direction.
Declaring herself a ‘sugar baby’, she goes out to find an older man to dote over her, sleeping with them not in return for money, but for plush gifts and fancy dinners. Yet with her column now back in the newspaper, she finds herself needing to write about a series of escalating situations, and the pursuit of journalism seems to leapfrog her own personal desires, putting her in an uncomfortable situation.
The New Romantic is an engaging, non-cliched rom-com, with a down-to-earth attitude that you don’t often find in this type of story. Written and directed by Carly Stone, the film makes the most of its tragi-comedic situations, if not fully exploring some of the themes around modern day romance, or even the notion of being a sugar baby. It’s a film that fizzles out a little bit towards the end but still makes a few nice plays en-route, with star Jessica Barden owning the screen in another superb performance.