Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival, North America’s largest genre film festival, just wrapped up its 25th year. During this edition, the fest’s lineup had to be shortened due to the ongoing pandemic, ditto in-person screenings which were totally scrapped. Transitioning to virtual screenings, with international premieres streamed “under tight digital security and a limited number of tickets sold” this year’s fest was a resounding success — a three-week shindig for movie nerds worldwide broadcast at the comfort of their own homes (take notes TIFF).
It was just two years ago that I discovered Daniel Goldhaber’s “Cam” at this very festival, which was consequentially bought by Netflix. Nothing close to that kind of surprise arrived last year, but this year I have a new “coup-de-Coeur,” as the Quebecois love to call their new favorite works of art. A film so riveting, from its direction to its action, that I am here to plead, no beg, distributors to pick it up.
That movie is Ben Hozie’s “PVT Chat,” and it stars Julia Fox, who turned a lot of heads in last year’s “Uncut Gems,” but even in the wake of that movie, she goes for broke here, pulling out all the stops as a leather-clad cam girl/femme fatale in Hozie’s film. “PVT Chat” defies description as it keeps its focus on a wide-eyed burnout (Peter Vack), with a talent for online blackjack and the dominatrix (Fox) he meets in a chat room and masturbates to during private calls every night. When the opportunity for an in-person meeting starts to get flirted with, doubt arises, mistrust comes into the game and reality hits our protagonist like a sledgehammer.
It sounds tasteless, but it isn’t. This is a sexy, provocative, and timely statement-— it plays like a 21st century Last Tango In Paris — that isn’t afraid to tackle the complexities of sexual connection in the digital media age. The questions being asked are uncomfortable, but necessary. Has sex been too commercialized by the internet that its principles are now scattershot? Is the definition of intimacy today very different than it was just a decade ago? Hozie seems to think so.
“PVT Chat” is an anxiety-ridden comedy, love story, drama, noir, and, really, horror show — it doesn’t just work solely due to its lead’s magnetic performances, but also because Hozie’s magnetic handheld camera allows us to peak into the lives of these characters. One wonders if, in the post-pandemic world, “PVT Chat” will ever be able to find a distributor willing to risk it and release this fearless film — an NC-17 rating is almost a given —- but, if anything, Hozie, Fox, and Vack remind us there are still artists out there willing to go for broke, bare their souls on-screen, all for the sake of art. Godspeed.