Cam Girl

Cam Girl

Suspense

Chemical Burn Entertainment

R4 DVD

First, I must caution that this film will not be to everybody’s taste. Apart from the “budget cheapie sleaze” look it has a number of annoying bits of camera work that may turn you off it. The constant point-of-view shots, the intermittent and apparently purposeless changes from black and white to colour and back again and the jumpy picture can be useful techniques but this film uses them, I think, to excess. Initially it comes across as just another semi-tasteful skin-flick. If you feel adventurous, however, there is a very tense, suspenseful film buried in there.

The film starts by setting the atmosphere in black and white. A cam girl is one who performs sexually titillating acts on a paid internet site. Mary, screen name “Rose”, is a cam girl. She has her followers and regulars but her work is still not profitable enough to pay the rent. She is in debt quite heavily and it is weighing on her mind. She can make more money as a prostitute but doesn’t want to go there. As the pressure mounts, though, she is finding she may have no alternative.

One of her “Johns” whose screen name is Honorious seems a little nicer and less lascivious than most of her customers and is sympathetic to her problems. He urges her not to go down the prostitution path. Mary gets an offer to pose for a photographer and it will at least give her some badly-needed extra money. She has no particular qualms about being photographed in the nude – after all, it’s the same sort of work that she is doing on the webcam site. Her troubles turn serious when the photographer is found murdered shortly after the shoot. Mary may have been the last person to see him alive. It gets worse when she realises she is being spied on in her own apartment. Although she thinks it is her landlord, who is hounding her for the rent and has suggested she can pay it “in other ways”, the pressure is building.

In desperation she turns to a priest who has been urging her to keep in touch with her church. He absolves her from what she has done and she feels a little better, but her problems are still there. Honorious is becoming more involved in her life and seems to be becoming obsessive about her. How can Mary get out of the problems that are dragging her closer to a breakdown? Can she even do it? Her only friends in the world are another cam girl and the mysterious Honorious.

The entire film is carried by the attractive Layla Randle-Conde. There are no other actors. It is a big load to put on a relatively inexperienced actress but she does a very credible job with only a few very minor glitches. We see a lot of her scantily-clad body but this is accepted as part of the plot, not just as sleazy voyeurism. The film taken by the spy camera in her apartment somehow looks more sleazy than her work.

Once you have watched the film right through you see that the odd camera work becomes more logical. It is partly to overcome the lack of other actors and is partly to show that her life, such as it is, is so dependent on cameras. Her only contact with the real world is via her phone and webcam. I leave you to decide whether the technique works or not.

Reviews appear on the Synergy website with a single cover image. In the digital and print edition, reviews appear with multiple images and with expanded content.

This review will appear in Volume 4 No. 1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy.

We recommend you download the free digital edition (or buy the print edition) to get the most from Synergy. The print and digital editions of Synergy also include a large selection of articles and features not found on the website. If you have a limited download quota you can view the digital edition via the Issuu viewer on the digital edition page.

If you came to this page directly (and missed our menu), click here to go to the front page of Synergy Website or use the following link: http://www.synergy-magazine.com