The New Romantic

The New Romantic (2018) is a Canadian comedy-drama directed by Carly Stone — watch it online on iFILM. Jessica Barden leads as Blake Conway, a campus journalist who hands out relationship advice in her column while her own love life is running on empty. Camila Mendes and Evan Jogia co-star.

With graduation closing in and student debt already a fixture of her future, Blake's standard dating scene — broke guys her age, awkward coffees, zero prospects — starts to feel like a dead end. Her friend Morgan offers a different frame: older men, real dinners, actual gifts. Blake says yes, then does what any journalist would — starts documenting the whole thing, turning her arrangement into material and trying to figure out whether what she's doing is pragmatic or something she'll need to justify to herself later.

Carly Stone keeps the tone sharp without tipping into judgment; the film is less interested in whether sugar dating is right or wrong than in what it reveals about the value Blake places on her own time and attention. It's the kind of small Canadian indie that finds more honesty in a tight 81 minutes than most bigger-budget romances manage. Stream The New Romantic (2018) online on iFILM.