In Josh and Benny Safdie’s excellent Uncut Gems, opposite a manic, bravado-oozing Adam Sandler, Julia Fox gives a star-making debut as Julia—Howard’s (Sandler) golden-hearted girlfriend. In a film full of miserable, bitter characters, Fox is the shining beacon of hope, and her presence is much needed: The film is a thrill ride of inescapable anxiety, like taking the firecracker scene from Boogie Nights and stretching it to two full hours until the tension inevitably reaches its irreversible breaking point. Fox, while not exactly the comic relief, assuredly brings some sense of relief as the emotional anchor to the film. She’s undeniably charming, kind-hearted, and lovable. Nobody seems to give a damn about Howard Ratner except her, and her commitment to making him not feel like a complete loser is genuinely touching.
Julia Fox Steals the Show in 'PVT Chat'
It’s largely because of the charm of Fox’s on-screen presence that the character works so well. Julia (the character) is vulnerable but bubbly and Fox lends an inconquerable sympathy to her character. It’s an impressive debut, but it’s in her next film that Fox gives her finest performance to date. In the criminally underrated PVT Chat, the third feature from writer/director Ben Hozie, Fox plays Scarlett, a sweet-talking and domineering cam girl from San Francisco (or so we're first led to believe). When Jack (Peter Vack), an obsessive gambler with an affinity for online blackjack, becomes increasingly enamored with Scarlett, the two begin a tumultuous transactional relationship that soon unearths the lies that each presents to the other. Both lead performances are strong, but Julia Fox steals the show and completely makes it her picture.
Scarlett Is a Gripping, Complicated Character
PVT Chat is a picture that’s all about hustling, focusing on a world where all relationships are transactional, and Fox’s natural charisma lends credibility to the role. Scarlett is a cam girl who plays the role of dominatrix, and Jack is her enthusiastic submissive. It’s a refreshingly candid pair of roles that show a culture infrequently depicted in film. The movie is daringly sexually explicit throughout, and those sensitive to such content will surely find enough here to be disagreeable. That’s the core of PVT Chat, though. It takes some explicit themes and content, which are often dismissed as being taboo, and treats them in a matter-of-fact way. The characters (Scarlett in particular) are portrayed as the real, complex people that they are. Scarlett is a cam girl that makes what's presumably a large amount of money doing something that she's good at, something that she seems to actually enjoy. Jack is a sex-crazed gambler that feels ripped from a Paul Schrader film. Through their interactions with each other, both are pushed into the kind of serious self-reflection that's often too uncomfortable.
Fox steps into her role with an impressive confidence. On the opposite side of Jack’s computer screen—and, eventually, out in the real world once the film gives more focus to her—Scarlett charms her way through one transaction after another, cool and confident. What makes Scarlett work so well, though, and what makes PVT Chat such a neat little film, is that Fox brings a complexity to the character that could have easily gotten lost along the way. She’s notably assured. She’s calm and relaxed, and while video chatting with Jack, her ability to be assertive doesn’t lead to a one-dimensional sketch.
While grappling with similar concepts as Daniel Goldhaber’s eerie Cam (which was written by Isa Mazzei, who used her prior experience as a cam girl when writing the script), PVT Chat doesn’t aim for exploring the dark side of the profession. Sure, it’s undeniably gritty and frank about its subject matter, but there’s plenty of humanity there, too. Though Jack is the flick’s primary protagonist, Scarlett is as equally a crucial character.
PVT Chat doesn’t pull the predictable trick of portraying Scarlett as a malicious grifter. She’s more complicated than that. Just because she’s dishonest about who she is and where she resides doesn’t mean she’s portrayed as cruel. There’s a moral complexity made possible by Fox being simultaneously domineering and empathetic. When she shows Jack some of her paintings, there are glimpses of a glistening vulnerability. It’s the first time she actually seems shy in the movie, letting down the curtain of her dominatrix persona to be uncharacteristically personal. Is this shyness sincere, or is it all part of her ploy to get Jack’s trust...and money? By the end of the film, the answer is pretty clear, but until then, Fox keeps her character's cards close to her chest. In the moment, it could easily be either, and that’s part of what makes the character so fascinating.
Scarlett Is Just as Important to the Film as Jack
If it wasn't already clear from her stint in Uncut Gems, PVT shows that Julia Fox has enough screen presence and talent to (hopefully) score some leading roles in the future. There'll definitely be plenty of similarities between Scarlett and Uncut Gems's Julia—both are in charge of their sexuality, both are effortlessly charming, and both talk in the same, soft-spoken valley girl inflection that has since become Fox's trademark. What makes the two different, though, is the amount of self-assuredness that each brings to their role in the plot. Julia feels more like a supporting character, a crucial part of Howard's characterization, but one destined for secondary billing. Scarlett, on the other hand, stands with equal importance to Jack. Throughout the film, her role as a cam girl is complicated by romantic relationships and the obligations that they might bring. Where Julia has an unwavering loyalty to Howard, Scarlett is more concerned with what she wants. If her sessions with Jack are profitable, great. If she happens to enjoy them in the meanwhile, even better.
About halfway through PVT Chat, Jack fabricates a preposterous lie that he’s a Silicon Valley bro who’s developing technology that allows people to “trade thoughts directly through the cloud”, something that sounds suspiciously like the dystopian Neuralink. Scarlett believes him, at least kind of. Fox delivers her lines in a way that blends a sense of being impressed with a reserved skepticism. The exclusive focus on Jack in the first half of PVT Chat treats him as a flawed, but understandable character. His sleaziness is more often than not overpowered by the sincerity that he shows Scarlett. But it's when Scarlett's on screen that the film really works.
Scarlett's character is more interesting and more rounded than the movie's lead. It isn't just a matter of writing it that way—Fox nails the precarious high-wire balance between being selfishly scheming and frankly exposed. It's a character worth getting to know. Why she cams, what she hopes to get out of it, and where her heart leads her matters. When the film climaxes in a finale of raw sexuality, it’s difficult to see Vack and Fox as actors. They're very much their characters, and Fox makes it clear that she's stolen the show. It's a grand performance that bares all to any audience that's willing to look past the darkness to find the beauty.