Ben Hozie’s “PVT Chat” 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 strong 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.
SCORE: A-
For Schrader, AI solves the curious practical filmmaking problem he had. How about just creating Black people? No casting calls, no agents, no actors turning down the roles.