Fucktoys

Bluesky

If you are in any way familiar with the traditions or theories of tarot, you will be shaking your head almost every time you see it in a film. Here, however, it is so wildly specific (and unanchored) that it’s clear the filmmaker doesn’t intend it to be taken seriously. That filmmaker is Annapurna Sriram, who wrote and directed this widely acclaimed work. She also stars in it as a sex worker named AP, who gets that tarot reading out on a barge in a lonely part of the Bayou, from an elaborately attired individual going by the name of Madame Krystal (played by Big Freedia). The Sun; the five of cups; and the Hanged Man, reversed. She has been cursed, Madame Krystal tells her, and it will cost exactly $1,000 dollars to have the curse lifted. AP thinks she can get the money together in a couple of days.

Why would AP think she was cursed? Bad things happen in her life sometimes, she explains, and lately she’s been feeling a bit off. Truth be told, most people are feeling a bit off. The world has been ripped up by ferocious storms and now everyone outside the billionaire class is clinging onto life in the ruins, running whatever gigs and scams will keep them in food, clothes and drugs. That does not, however, mean that life can’t be fun. AP often enjoys her work, even if many of her clients bore her. She likes to party and daydream, and she rarely doubts her own powers.

At a party in an abandoned mansion somewhere just outside Trashtown, AP belittles her client in the bathroom before going off to look for someone else who will be happy to piss on him. As she wanders around, we see people engaged in bare knuckle fighting, and somebody else taking a sledgehammer to a retaining wall. To her delight, AP encounters a former lover, skinny blond leather-clad biker Danni (Sadie Scott), and when the police arrive to raid the place, they escape together, holing up in the diner where AP’s mum works and stuffing their faces with doughnuts.

Any number of films try to sell themselves on inviting us to ogle outsiders like these. The difference with Fucktoys is that it’s made by people who actually get it, who relate to this scene, and nobody is objectified. Though elements of the story are playfully exaggerated, this framing allows for what it is many other ways an opportunity to talk directly about life as many people live it – just not the kind of life that makes it into Hollywood movies. It’s a natural fit for Fantasia. It may look rough, but it’s shot on 16mm and its characters live in full colour.

AP and Danni may not have much power (much like the rest of us in a world run by billionaires), but they have plenty of agency and humour. AP lounges around with a client who apologises for being basically gay, but enjoys talking about old movies and musicals. Danni fists wealthy celebrity and incompetent artist James Falcone (Brandon Flynn), who subsequently presents them with an NDA and says “I know being a hooker is risky. I played one on TV.”

Things between AP and Danni are complicated. Sometimes it feels like love. Madame Krystal has told AP that Danni is her twin flame, but not for this lifetime. She has also told her not to do the coke at the party. Which party? Nothing seems to be that simple. Later, an encounter with the world’s most inconsiderate ex leads to heartbreak for her. Sympathetic but loathe to miss out on a grifting opportunity, a glittery elf girl with a sunbed offers to reset her life for $300. “If you could just take a bath with the bones of your dead ancestors steeped in lavender tea, I think that would be a really good thing for you.”

There are reminders, everywhere, of the vulgarities of the rich. During an orgy at a country house, the tables are strewn with dishes which might have been presented as delicacies in a seafront hotel in the 1970s. A badly dressed older woman makes excruciating attempts at empathy. Later, AP will make her way to a clean modern house with an infinity pool where, for a brief time, she will imagine she could go anywhere, reaching out into forever. It’s dangerous to forget what one is, but it’s also a chance to grasp the means of making change, however remote the chance seems – of achieving, in this cruelly hierarchical world, a different kind of ascension.

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