"PVT Chat" provocative and compelling with an eye-catching turn by Julia Fox

PVT Chat (2021) 

“PVT Chat” daringly explores a specific subculture: the relationship between sex worker and client in a virtual setting. As written, directed, and edited by Ben Hozier (the frontman of New York-based punk band Bodega), the film is refreshingly sex-positive and never judges those being paid to give pleasure. Considered to be “a romance about freedom, fantasy, death, and friendship,” “PVT Chat” feels more like a cautionary tale about instant gratification, finding human connection online, and living a double life. Then again, maybe it is kind of a web-cam love story for today.

After his roommate dies, Jack (Peter Vack) is left to the pay the rent—which he’s late on again—for his one-bedroom apartment in New York City. He’s an online blackjack player by trade, and at night, Jack blows most of his money on paying cam girls in tokens. One of the girls, full-lipped dominatrix Scarlet (Julia Fox) from San Francisco, peaks his interest, especially when she satisfies Jack’s kinky side. Scarlet will smoke a cigarette, blow the smoke right into her camera, and stub the butt as if it were on Jack’s tongue. After he gets off, Jack just wants to chat and get to know her. They begin a relationship that, for Scarlet, is purely transactional, even though she expresses her passion for painting. One night when he thinks he spots Scarlet inside a NYC Chinatown bodega, Jack starts to follow her but stops himself. Will Scarlet be up for actual physical intimacy?

“PVT Chat” gets right to the point, the camera practically spying from afar in Jack’s dimly lit shoebox apartment as he masturbates and makes introductions with Scarlet on his laptop. It’s a private moment, and director Ben Hozier breaks down all barriers, assuring us that we will be seeing much more of these actors. A screen barrier, though, is what works for Jack and Scarlet. As shot by Hozier himself, the city itself is never sanitized, which suits a story about those hustling in a place where many live beyond their means. An off-the-cuff, handheld shooting style not only adds to the film's vivid sense of place and verisimilitude but bears a resemblance to the gritty New York that exists in Josh and Benny Safdie's films.

Formally provocative to the point of just skirting pornography, the film gets a lot from its two courageous, go-for-it lead performances, nudity besides. Peter Vack has perhaps the trickiest task of making Jack a mostly insufferable skeeze and still earning our sympathy. He’s a gambler, but to Scarlet, he’s a tech entrepreneur developing an app that will be able to allow its users to communicate telepathically. Much like Jack, one cannot take their eyes off Scarlet, played by an uninhibited Julia Fox, who shot this before already becoming discovered in the Safdie brothers' “Uncut Gems.” When the film pulls back the curtain to see Scarlet’s real life, we get a better understanding of why she works as a cam girl and how she really is the one in control. Besides playing a persona and possibly lying about where she lives, it seems like Scarlet can truly be herself around Jack.

“PVT Chat” never really goes where you expect, and the pivots it makes still feel true to the characters and their desperate choices. Hozier’s script loses focus at times, like many of the scenes that double down on Jack’s bad luck after he befriends Will (Kevin Moccia), the man painting his apartment, and Will’s friend Larry (Buddy Duress). When the film refocuses on Jack and Scarlet, audience alignment keeps changing and muddying itself between these two faster than Jack can win back Will’s son’s college tuition. In some way, they deserve each other, even if their relationship seems more erotic through a computer screen. “PVT Chat” may not be saying anything novel about yearning and intimacy IRL versus online. How it says it, though, is compelling and unflinching without being cheap or titillating. 

Grade: B

Dark Star Pictures is releasing “PVT Chat” (86 min.) in theaters February 5, 2021 and on demand and digital February 9, 2021.