New Thriller Is Like Black Mirror for Cam Ladies

In the new thriller Camera, which premieres simultaneously upon Netflix and in theaters in Friday, pretty much everything that camera girl Alice (The Handmaid’ s Tale’ s Madeline Brewer) fears might happen does. What surprises, although, is the specificity of her fears. Alice is frightened, of course , that her mommy, younger brother, and the associated with their small town in New Mexico will discover her night job. And she’ s probably not alone in her worries that a client or two will breach the substantial but understandably not perfect wall that she has developed between her professional and private lives. But most of her days are spent worrying about the details of her work: Does her react push enough boundaries? Which will patrons should she progress relationships with— and at which in turn others’ expense? Can the woman ever be online enough to crack her site’ s Top 50?

Alice is a intimacy worker, with all the attendant dangers and occasional humiliations— and this moody, neon-lit film never shies away from that simple fact. But Alice is also a great artist. In front of the camera, she’ s a convincing occasional actress and improviser as the sweet but fanciful “ Lola. ” Behind it, she’ s a writer, a movie director, and a set designer. (Decorated with oversize flowers and teddy bears, the spare bedroom that she uses as her set seems to be themed Barbie After Hours. ) So when the unimaginable happens— Alice’ s account is usually hacked, and a doppelgä nger starts performing her act, with less creativity but more popularity— her indignation is ours, as well.

The film finds stakes— and a resolution— whose freshness is not easy to understate.
But Cam takes its period getting to that mystery. That’ s more than fine, since the film, written by previous webcam model Isa Mazzei and first-time director Daniel Goldhaber, immerses us in the dual economies of intimacy work and online interest. The slow reveal of the day-to-day realities of cam-girling is the movie’ s serious striptease— all of it surrounded by an aura of authenticity. (Small-bladdered Alice, for example , constantly apologizes to her clients for the frequency of her bathroom visits. ) And though Alice denies that her selected career has anything to do with a personal sense of female empowerment, the film assumes an unspoken yet unmissable feminist consideration of sex work. The disjunct between Alice’ s appearing to be regularness and Lola’ t over-the-top performances— sometimes affecting blood capsules— is the hint of the iceberg. More amazing is the sense of safe practices and control that webcam-modeling allows— and how illusory that can become when male entitlement gets unleashed by social niceties.

If the first half of live sex cams Cam is pleasantly episodic and purringly tense, the latter half— in which Alice searches for her hacker— is clever, inventive, and wonderfully evocative. A kind of Black Mirror for cam girls, its frights are limited to this tiny cut of the web, but no less resonant for that. We see Alice strive to maintain a certain standard of creative rawness, even while she’ s pressured by machine in front of her to get something of an automaton very little. And versions of the picture where a desperate Alice calling the cops for help with the hack, only to be faced with confusion about the web and suspicion about her job, have doubtlessly performed out countless times in the past two decades. At the intersection of the industry that didn’ t exist a decade ago and a great ageless trade that’ t seldom portrayed candidly in popular culture, the film finds stakes— and a resolution— whose freshness is hard to understate.

The wonderfully versatile Machine, who’ s in just about any scene, pulls off essentially three “ characters”: Alice, Alice as Lola, and Bizarro Lola. It’ t a bravura performance that flits between several facts while keeping the film grounded as the plot twists make narrative leap after narrative leap. Cam’ s villain perhaps represents more an admirable provocation over a satisfying answer. But with many of these naked ambition on display, exactly who could turn away