Co-written and directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Swiped might be the most misunderstood film of the year, a subversive rom-com that makes you wonder how Legally Blonde might have turned out as a documentary. Goldenberg has form for this kind of thing, being the director of the Will Ferrell-Kristen Wiig drama A Deadly Adoption, a parody of Lifetime Channel movies that was so deadpan it actually appeared on the Lifetime Channel and its audience didn’t notice. Although it can be very (knowingly) funny at times, Swiped isn’t quite so arch as that, although it does hijack the schmaltzy, feelgood tropes of the empowered-woman-makes-good formula to deliver something quite unexpectedly dark and, although by now a period piece, very much of its time.

The Trojan Horse that helps Goldenberg to pull off this admirable sleight of hand is British actress Lily James, who adopts an impressive U.S. vocal fry to play the tough but vulnerable Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of the female-facing dating app Bumble. In that respect, it makes an interesting counterpoint to the canon of tech-bro biodramas that began in 2010 with The Social Network. Wolfe Herd’s story is somewhat different, however; Swiped is an unofficial biopic for the simple reason that key parts of the story are still subject to a stifling non-disclosure agreement, for reasons that soon become horribly clear.

It begins with Wolfe Herd, then just Wolfe, gatecrashing a startup convention, trying to get support for a website that would help orphanages find volunteers. Inside the event, Wolfe quickly finds that women are an anomaly in these situations and is mistaken for a hostess or, even worse, a party girl. On her way out, while waiting for the valet, she strikes up a conversation with Sean Rad (Ben Schnetzer), founder of something called Cardify. Rad is unconvinced by her noble intentions. “Is this what you want to dedicate your life to?” he asks. “I just don’t want to sell people things they don’t need,” she replies.

Rad takes a chance on Wolfe and brings her into the fold, and although Cardify is still the main product at Hatch Labs, the workforce is doubtful about its future and have dozens of other projects on the go, the key being a dating site to rival Match.com and eHarmony. Wolfe fits in well, doing field research and discovering that an app, rather than a website, is a way to get millennials in rather than “sad divorcees” of a certain age. She also gives the new app a name — Tinder — though this is one of many things the tech world will try to take away from her, giving the title a double meaning.

The atmosphere at Hatch Labs is party central, a young-adult playground that Goldenberg presents as-is, with its slides and ping-pong tables. In her euphoria, Wolfe perhaps misses the important red flags that this scenario sets out and instead embarks on a campus tour to recruit students that gives Tinder its all-important launch. A montage of young woman “up all night to get lucky” suggests that women that use Tinder are liberated and free. The comedown is almost immediate, however, and a lot of bad press, including a piece about “dick pics” in Vice, threatens Tinder’s image.

You might be expecting Wolfe to take up arms against this, but in the first of the film’s smart reversals, she fails her female co-workers when they demand she speak up about it. “What’s with the hesitation?” they ask. “I’m the only woman in there,” she says, and it’s a point borne out when Rad asks for caution on the issue, saying, “We need to be practical not emotional.” To make matters worse, Wolfe has become romantically involved with Rad’s second-in-command, Justin Mateen (Jackson White), and her attempts to speak up for herself alienate both men. The fallout with Mateen is especially unnerving, the first in a series of scenes that show how men use the digital space to threaten and intimidate women, whether it be in texts or by social media.

Wolfe’s ousting from Tinder is not the end but another beginning, one that carries another sting in the tail when — no pun intended — she is headhunted by Badoo to start up Bumble, a dating app in which “women go first”. History threatens to repeat itself when the CEO of Badoo (Dan Stevens) is himself sucked into the MeToo vortex, but this time Wolfe is determined not to let herself go down with the ship.

The beauty of Swiped, however, is its lightness of touch, and star James understands the assignment perfectly well. Though it bears some of the cosmetic touches of a chick flick it is, in its way, actually more profound than a film like 2019’s Bombshell as an insight into disparity in the workplace. And in no scene is this better displayed when Tinder hits 1 million users and an impromptu celebration sets the office sprinklers off. Rad orders his PA to organize a party and invite everyone in town. “I have to call the fire department and insurance company first,” she says. Which tells you everything you need to know.

Title: Swiped
Distributor: Hulu
Release date: September 19, 2025 (streaming)
Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Screenwriters: Bill Parker, Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Kim Caramele
Cast: Lily James, Jackson White, Myha’la, Ben Schnetzer, Dan Stevens
Running time: 1 hr 50 mins