Review of Newness

Newness (2017)
7/10
At least the first half really works ...
21 August 2022
Nicholas Hoult and Laia Costa are very attractive young people compulsively using a dating app and having several minute stands. They match one night ... after each had already had a previously unsuccessful hook-up ... and meet for drinks, but hit it off so well that they don't just immediately have sex. Soon they are in a committed relationship, but familiarity creeps in and they conveniently cheat on each other on the same night. They realize that while they really do love each other, they are also really drawn to the rush of new relationships, so they decide to try an open relationship. Each is allowed to pursue other people as long as they are completely honest with each other?

So ... do you think that works out well for them?

This movie has some things going for it. Hoult and Costa are really quite good ... Costa especially ... and neither will disappoint in the film's numerous and quite explicit sex scenes. The style, impressionistic with very close, hand-held jittery cam, makes the early sequences pretty exciting, and the film goes quite some way towards recreating the rush of physical attraction and first love.

This relationship is not very interesting though. The really quite charming actors are not given characters that ever have much of interest to say, so it's tough to invest much in their relationship. Once the open relationship starts going south and Danny Huston enters the film, you're almost routing for the Huston/Costa pairing to prevail since he's actually given decent things to say. The film reaches a conclusion, but it's not a very compelling one since you don't really care about this couple and the issues that drove them into an open relationship are never really resolved anyway.
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