Newly Single is a 2018 drama about a man on the verge of a big step in his career, but when his girlfriend leaves him, insecurities surface and he transforms into a wrecking ball on a stream of darkly comedic dates and misguided romantic pursuits.
For most, even if they say they do, not many really want a movie to be authentic. We need some detachment, a sense that what’s on screen can transport us to something identifiable but still based in fantasy, even if the fantasy looks real. Writer/director Adam Christian Clark‘s latest slice of life is decidedly not real but it sure feels it, a blisteringly on point examination of a man looking for direction in a small world designed to have none. Skipping many of the conventional Indie film uprights, its departure from these standards certainly helps in giving it legs, though it’s the film’s sensational commitment to this forever incomplete journey that makes it significant.
Astor Williams Stevenson (Clark) is an independent filmmaker struggling for exposure in the industry but more so, perhaps fatally, personal acceptance from those near him. This loses him his girlfriend Valerie (Molly C. Quinn) and he soon finds himself back in the dating game, though he’s not really adept at the rules. He barely understand there are some. Self-absorbed in his own spiral and needs, he goes on the prowl in a series of empty sexual exchanges while burdened by the memories of Valerie, wanting her back but overcast by their breakdowns. What’s a guy do to in these complex modern times?
A lot of films try to fit in the era they are made, hoping to define what love and life is like in the spaces where they exist, and this is clearly where Clark looks to wedge his tale, fitting his soured anti-hero into a world shaped by the history of relationships, colored by where we are now. It’s not that the film distracts us with loads of on screen text messages and back seats in Uber rides, something that so many modern movies lean into with too much zest. Instead, Astor feels like a guy who doesn’t fit … anywhere, seeing and trying to make all these things work but sort of just to the side of it.
He’s the kind of a guy who picks up an attractive girl at a bar, flirts and get her up to his apartment, teasing her about his survival skills, asking if she’d like to see his gun and comes back with an actual shotgun when she says yes, not realizing she was hoping to see, well, his other gun. There’s an undeniable humor in moments like these yet they aren’t designed for laughs I suspect. Astor is a genuinely out of sync cog who doesn’t know it, thinking everyone else is off their timing.
Clark seems to understand the machinations of Indie movies well, having Astor be a voice in that system, trying to make a movie about real love while he can’t seem to make any sense of it in real life. In truth, he’s not all that likable, often so consumed in his own ambitions that he is simply not a nice guy. That’s maybe a bit harsh because we’re never not rooting for him, Clark careful to keep him hovering in the shades of good and bad, a place we all probably feel comfortable within. His relationship with Izzy (an outstanding Jennifer Kim), for example, is brutal.
I love mostly though what Clark does with music, the film opening with a recurring theme of Astor running, the soundtrack booming with this lounge-like upbeat horn-infused jazzy piece that sets a stinging tone of disconcerting affection from the start (watch how this dramatically changes by the film’s final shot). It’s a hint of just how confident Clark is in his material, the movie often raw in its approach to sex and confrontation, a bit voyeuristic, especially in his periodical, scathing phone calls with his mother. It’s a challenging film at times, refusing to play into expectations, a wee commentary on the art of making movies and the savages of looking for love. Highly recommended.