There have been a lot of movies about cam girls in the last few years. Some have been documentaries like 2016’s Cam Girlz. Others, like Netflix’s Cam last year, are narrative thrillers that explore the possible dangers women face in choosing to be so vulnerable online. Now, Use Me, the new film by Julian Shaw that premiered at the Brooklyn Film Festival tonight, combines both genres. Funded by a successful Kickstarter in 2016, it stars Shaw himself as he tries to make a documentary about a popular real-life cam girl, Ceara Lynch, a “mental humiliatrix” who men pay to “ruin” their lives.
Though the film eventually becomes an erotic thriller, the opening scenes appear to come from the straightforward documentary Shaw initially intended to make. After pitching the idea of the documentary to Lynch over Skype in 2013, Shaw spent a good chunk of his savings to fly from Australia to Portland to start filming. Those early scenes chiefly serve as a detailed primer on the online FemDom community and particularly Lynch’s business model.
Though some of her income comes from sending her clients unwashed clothing she’s worn or toe nail clippings, her particularly specialty is “financial domination.” In those situations, a client gives Lynch their credit card and then derives pleasure from watching her spend their money—sometimes a little more than they expect. In one instance, Lynch spent $20,000 dollars in a single online shopping spree at Saks Fifth Avenue.
It’s a fascinating look into Lynch’s life and it’s precisely because the film so firmly establishes itself in a real if heightened world that it’s able to go to such extremes once it shifts genres. That shift begins when one of Lynch’s clients offers to contribute $7,500 to the film’s Kickstarter if she and Shaw send him a make out video to fulfill his cuckolding fantasy. Given the chemistry the pair share, it’s unsurprising when the make out escalates to the point where Lynch breaks one of her three hard limits: not having sex on camera. In a real documentary, it would be hard to believe that Shaw would share–let alone film–the scenes where he and Lynch talk post-coitally or later try to define their relationship, but Shaw is able to push the boundaries of believability simply because of his subject matter.
In part, that’s because both he and Lynch compulsively film themselves as part of their professions. So, even in the most intimate or pedestrian scenes, it makes sense that not only is it filmed, but everyone is so well-covered by cameras. Shaw and Lynch are used to being vulnerable and honest on camera, so we don’t question why they’d continue to be for their film.
However, the more important reason is that Shaw is always filming anyway. As he explains to Lynch during their post-coital conversation, he became obsessed with filming himself as a child after he inadvertently recorded his own abuse at the hands of his maternal aunt. Though the alleged footage we see of that incident is the closest the film comes to doing something utterly tasteless, the effects of that event are vital to where the film goes next.
As Shaw explains to Lynch, after that incident, he became obsessed with filming the darker moments of his life—even when he knows he should stop. When his girlfriend of 10 years breaks up with him, his first words after she tells him, “I love you, but I’m letting you go,” are “did you stop the record?” So, when things turn dangerous, in the film’s second half, it make sense that Shaw keeps recording when most rational people would stop.
It would be unfair to spoil the tension Shaw so brilliantly sets up, but things essentially go awry when Shaw begins to question whether Lynch is abusing her clients in order to leave them broke and desperate. Hoping to confront her with a disgruntled client’s financial woes, Shaw pushes things too far and leaves Lynch in a dangerous position. Though it can be hard to believe that Shaw doesn’t get the authorities involved in those scenes and using recognizable actors in some of the minor roles can break the spell of realism, both Shaw and Lynch give believable, effective performances and it’s easy to invest in the central metaphor at work even if the conceit of realism begins to fall apart.
Despite the emphasis on it in the marketing, in the end, the least interesting thing about Use Me is figuring out which parts are or aren’t real. Indeed, viewers watching the film solely to separate fact from fiction will likely be disappointed by how easy it is to guess. Rather, the best way to get as much as possible out of the movie is to see it for what it is: a taut thriller that blurs the lines between documentary and narrative filmmaking to examine a deeper truth about addiction and taboo. Use Me will likely have a tough time breaking out of the the cam girl scene, but a film this good shouldn’t be a dirty little secret.
