A young man of the future searches for love on a dating app -- but it's corrupted.


SWEET NOTHINGS is used with permission from Christian Klein. Learn more at https://christianmklein.com.


Max is a young man getting back into the dating scene, and he's using an app called Sweet Nothings to get back into the swing of things, though he doesn't seem too excited by his prospects. As he swipes through, the possibilities fly by, but his attention is caught by a lovely red-haired woman who doesn't respond to his initial ping.

But another woman has matched with him, a sexy blond who lives close to him. Intrigued, he meets her at a local Starbucks, only to discover a new twist on the notion of "too good to be true."

Directed and written by Christian Klein, this witty sci-fi romantic comedy captures both the vagaries of the dating game and the way that information, algorithms and corporate interests could saturate even the most intimate sectors of our daily lives. There's plenty of wit in the writing as it details Max's efforts to find a date on the app he uses, which pokes fun at how much work it is: crafting just the right picture and description, scrolling through endless possibilities that are all the same in their generic bright prettiness. Dating via the app is just another digital chore in many ways.

The clever visuals juxtapose both the modern, ordinary textures of everyday life and the deft use of special effects, which visually portray the way we're inundated with ads, recommendations, pings, messages and even more information wherever we go. Holograms and screens are constantly popping up around Max, whether he's at home or out. Max seems inured to their presence, even when they offer him products and services perfectly tailored to his life.

Actor Zack Koslow plays Max with a sense of modern ennui, often dazed by the influx of information flying around him in space. But he comes out of his stupor when presented with some romantic possibilities. He meets his date Ambrosia at a local Starbucks, but the date goes sideways. She responds oddly to his warm-up conversation and then gets aggressively seductive in a very strange way -- until it becomes obvious to Max that it's not Ambrosia who's trying to seduce him.

Funny, satirical and thought-provoking, SWEET NOTHINGS is the type of sci-fi story that is just a few steps away from our current reality. Instead of burying our gazes in phones, the information and entertainment they hold can be projected into the real world. Yet we're still mostly disengaged, lost in a thicket of information tailored to our needs and wants. In the end, Max takes a sweet but scary risk to initiate a real-life conversation with a woman, and there's a note of hope and promise that the old-fashioned approach might work best. But even that is shaded with a tinge of dystopia, proving just how seductive our digital worlds are, even at the expense of our real ones.