With multiple lockdowns being enforced around the world through most of 2020, the human race had no choice but to recede inwards and explore the deepest depths of their psyche. Pertinent questions dominate our postmodern, capitalistic world, the most crucial being: is romance a possibility within the realms of online transactions? What drives us to seek solace and intimacy amid the drudgery of existence and how far are we willing to go in order to feel a little less broken? The overlapping of these stark realities is explored with startling authenticity in Ben Hozie’s PVT Chat, which emerges as a dark and uninhibited portrayal of desire in the digital age, replete with the wonders and trappings of the same. Starring Peter Vack and Julia Fox, PVT Chat explores the allure of fantasy over reality, while helming a complex relationship between two figures who engage in a cat-and-mouse game to achieve their own ends. Visceral and uncompromising in its vision, PVT Chat etches a gritty portrait of eroticism in the digital age with great nuance and authenticity.
PVT Chat hones its focus on Jack (Vack), who is a fantasist through and through, choosing to spend his fresh earnings from online blackjack on sexual chat rooms, despite being practically penniless and evicted from his apartment soon. Lounging all day in his unkempt, grimy apartment in Lower East Side Manhattan, Jack seems to be stuck in a perpetual loop of online gambling and talking to cam girls, desperately wishing to forge a connection of some sort, while absentmindedly munching on instant noodles, which seems to be all that he ever eats. Apart from the occasional urge to venture outside to withdraw money from the ATM and indulge in a flip-a-coin happy ending in a massage parlor, Jack rarely steps outside of the confines of his inner world, which is ruled by submissive kinks, desire, and online transactions. This posits Jack, not unlike a hikikomori, who seeks out extreme degrees of social isolation and an almost-absolute withdrawal from the world-at-large.
Enter Scarlet (Fox), a cam-girl dominatrix with whom Jack starts to have virtual sessions, indulging his kinks of being degraded in exchange for virtual tokens. While Jack takes pleasure in offering willful submissiveness to Scarlet through the screen, he craves for a more intimate connection, which prompts him to pay her solely for an earnest conversation. Despite the purely transactional nature of their relationship, Jack and Scarlet seem to share something complex and visceral, drenched in bouts of honest introspection and genuine connection.
In order to impress Scarlet, Jack pretends to be a tech prodigy who is on his way to create a groundbreaking invention. Seemingly impressed by this, Scarlet opens up about her own private life, going on to share her paintings with Jack, which the latter compliments with the gusto of an adolescent in love. However, things get murky when Jack spots Scarlet in the seamy streets of New York. These sequences wherein Jack dons the mantle of an obsessed stalker are triggering, to say the least, painting his desperation in a new, macabre light.
Dissatisfied with her own life, Scarlet finds herself spending more time virtually with Jack. This shift in perspective adds a unique authenticity to PVT Chat, as the film does not compromise in its portrayal of niche sexual kinks, offering no commentary or judgment on what it chooses to sordidly explore. While PVT Chat does intend to evoke empathy for Jack, who undoubtedly deals with traumas of his own, his worldview comes off as sleazy and shallow, although this is not to insinuate that he is not totally incapable of genuine, heartfelt emotion. Despite everything, Jack is superficial, living life amid compulsive lies and the perpetual need to satiate the urges within.
The climax of PVT Chat is bound to remain etched within audience's imagination, offering a glimpse of honesty despite its graphic and discordant nature. Although brimming with artistic dreams of her own, Scarlet is unable to bring them to fruition, caught up as she is in the somewhat-fetishized projections of herself by the men around her, be it in reality or the virtual world. Fox’s screen presence is magnetic and brilliant, as she brings a layer of aloof indifference to Scarlet, without delving into the territory of cruel and uncaring. On the other hand, Vack imbues Jack with a hapless desperation that borders on tense, twitchy awkwardness, with troubling glimpses of obsessive delusion. Although imperfect in terms of narrative integrity and dramatic execution, PVT Chat is as gritty as it gets, mirroring the bleak ennui of our sordid streets and cramped apartments, along with the desperate desires that stem amid real and virtual worlds.
PVT Chat is currently available in theatres and for streaming on VOD, courtesy of Dark Star Pictures. The film is 86 minutes long and remains unrated as of now.
Let us know your thoughts on the film in the comments!