PVT CHAT (2020)

 

Director: Ben Hozie

Screenplay: Ben Hozie

Cast: Julia Fox as Scarlett; Peter Vack as Jack; Buddy Duress as Larry; Keith Poulson as Duke; Dasha Nekrasova as QT4U; Heather Allison as Gorgeous_357; Nikki Belfiglio as Emma; Austin Brown as Himself; Atticus Cain as Henry the Landlord

Ephemeral Waves

 

Hey, can I borrow your copy of Ulysses?

A woman, named Scarlet (Julia Fox), is an online camera girl who has a dominatrix persona and gets male clients to masturbate and pretend to have cigarettes stubbed into their tongues, all whilst donating to her for requests as we seen in the first scene. The thing is, whilst a pretty adult set-up, with a sexually explicit opening in terms of the male client we see, there is a surprising comparison to be made with PVT CHAT, the first film by director-writer Ben Hozie, not being that different from a classic Hollywood melodrama in what the premise actually is. It still connects to the type of classic Hollywood films about romances involving mistaken identities, cons and/or idealised images of women which are not real, specifically for me Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941), which might be an odd comparison to make to this erotic drama. They are different films, Sturges' about Barbara Stanwyck playing a con woman trying to seduce a rich and gullible Henry Fonda but alongside this involving a con in its end, PVT CHAT is not really different except in tone and context. It exists in a different time, and with a different mindset to a premise you could work into the forties studio system, but the premise itself has a timelessness to it. That of an internet gambler named Jack (Peter Vack) who becomes obsessed with an ideal of a woman, in this case Scarlet, whose persona is entirely artificial for money, even if being paid in credit cards and credits for this performance in this modern film.

The image of the perfect woman to a heterosexual man, and the real woman herself, is a timeless theme, only here Jack comes to this conundrum having tried to talk to female cam girl workers, trying to get them to be the real person underneath, only to become physically attracted to Scarlet as an act. Even if, as they continue, she does open up about details like being a painter, he has fallen into the trap of mistaking the image to the real woman, which will show his follies among many. An indie dialogue driven production, this envisions this tale through streaming communication, as he hypothesises (lies) to her about envisioning "C-streaming", being able to directly from the brain communicate, all themes of connection intermingled around the fact he is hiding that he barely collecting money to live. In reality, he is "Blackjack" Jack, as he plays online blackjack to keep the bank account healthy, all whilst living in an apartment, being redecorated around him, that the landlord will want him to leave from eventually.

This timeless cycle of tropes and themes meet the influence of sixties and seventies work by the likes of John Cassavetes - literally, dropping in an anecdote from a minor character from the seventies itself, about talking to a Willie Nelson-like figure offering work only to take his nose off and place it on his desk - on past through the American independent boom of later decades. The past now includes the "Mumblecore" and indie films from the 2000s and 2010s, which have likely shown their influences. Looking here, there is also the greater reach for sexuality and depicting it, but with the touch that, whilst lead Julia Fox does nudity, early on and prominently director Ben Hozie depicts the male body first and more prominently, including Peter Vack as Jack, comfortable onscreen with male erections explicitly depicted throughout from Vack and others even if we do see Fox's Scarlet in intimate moments. The film is not pornographic too, and the matter-of-factness of this or depicting masturbation is a neutralising of any concern of the male gaze alongside the fact this is trying to depict this in a grounded reality with all the baggage in-between.

As mentioned, The Lady Eye reference is not out of place, as this does become a story out of a forties Hollywood film transposed into this new context, about an eventual con, stealing money, only for two unlikely people to fall in love, even if Jack's fixation on Scarlet is as much a sin he must overcome too. They will accidentally cross paths, or with someone who looks like her, in New York City's Chinatown district, which is not different from if it was depicted in a melodrama in the forties, only here is shot on the street and in a real grocery store in verisimilitude. This as well, in mind to this, reflects the world this story now exists in, about "inane art work" in a satirical moment halfway through, looking back with bleak humour at the "failed" Occupy Wall Street movement of September 2011, beginning that day when a protest movement started in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district. It is now turned into a female artist's mouth, in close-up, talking about "my check", eventually turning into covering a fully nude man in flour as a crowd ritually chant "my check" as they watch.

The fact I can see a melodrama here is not a discredit to either side, as the tropes are found in even Scarlet already dating someone else, Duke (Keith Poulson), a realisation Jack's love is initially a facsimile something you would see in a studio system film, as is he needs to see her as the real person she is. Her boyfriend, eventually, is also revealed to not be right person in her life. Whilst she seemingly gets over it, considering their plan to run a theatre company starts off sourly, as without her permission he dramatises a narrative about a female sex worker with some male dialogue dangerously veering to his own unspoken thoughts, Duke does play the trope of the original male love interest from many films, including very mainstream ones, not viewing her as herself and a poor choice for Scarlet to stay with.

Hopefully the review has offered a positive view of PVT CHAT. It is playful if a profane comedy, where the universal and the awkward co-exist, like secretly masturbating in a friend's room, using their laptop, not just an apt metaphor for this tone, but also an actual scene in the film. It is funny, and it shows that, for a work whose sexual explicitness and lo-fi look are put up front, shot on location and dialogue heavy, it also shows no real different between this or a Hollywood film from the past in terms of they all tackle these timeless questions we still have on our minds. This has the difference to be more flexible in tackling this question, the idealised version of someone you are attracted to and the real person, to be more sincere and more unpredictable. It is not a spoiler that this has a happy ending, even if from both sides having transgressed against each other, but it is how this comes together which is of the greater concern.