Last week I previewed the offerings of the Vermont International Film Festival, which continues through Sunday, October 26, at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington. One film that piqued my interest was the directorial debut of a young Burlington native, Annapurna Sriram, with a pointedly provocative title: Fucktoys.
Though the movie was shot in Louisiana, Sriram recounts in production notes that she spent 10 days in Vermont during the pandemic doing an intense “dress rehearsal,” planning each shot in the film’s meticulously constructed visual universe. Fucktoys premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Award. It screens at VTIFF on Thursday, October 23, at 9:30 p.m. in the Film House.
The deal
AP (Sriram) is a sex worker with a moped, an outdoor bedroom, a merry gang of gutter-punk friends and a curse. When her tooth falls out, she consults a bayou psychic (hip-hop artist Big Freedia), who likens AP to the Fool in the tarot’s Major Arcana and warns her that the only way to dispel the bad vibes is a sacrificial rite with a big price tag.
Broke and reluctant to kill anything, AP consults more psychics as she scrambles through a long night and day to earn a little cash. Her partner in this odyssey is her scrappy best friend, Danni (Sadie Scott), fresh from prison.
Danni and AP encounter a rogue’s gallery of clients, from the rich guests at a tiki-themed, coke-fueled sex party (complete with pineapple-ring hors d’oeuvres) to a fatuous celebrity named James Francone (Brandon Flynn) who fancies himself an artist. AP’s older boyfriend (Damian Young) tries to be her father figure, but he’s busy juggling a wife and kids. (Moreover, he confesses, he’s “probably gay” and would rather watch old movies than have sex with her.)
When AP gets a lead on a client who’s weird but loaded, she gives him a call. His auspicious number, 666-6969, just might bring her face-to-face with Fate.
Will you like it?
If I had to choose two moments that capture the spirit of Fucktoys, one would be during a lap-dance montage, when a client calls AP “so exotic” and inquires, “What are you?” Rather than humor his racism, she responds demurely, “A ho.”
The movie is a hedonistic, candy-colored satire, but razor-blade sharpness lurks behind the heroine’s sweet smile. In the sex party sequence, AP hits on a caterer (Marcus Anderson Jr.) with whom she commiserates about serving white people. But he rejects her after she jokingly suggests she pay for his services, turning their hookup into a transaction. Fucktoys isn’t exactly a message movie. But scenes like this suggest that the real “curse” could be the struggle to survive in an economic environment where people can’t remember how not to use each other as things.
The second key moment occurs when AP finally meets her big-fish client (Québécois actor François Arnaud) in his palatial home. “I love trash,” she enthuses, gazing raptly at an objet d’art that appears to be an ordinary rubbish bin. “I love trash,” he counters. After a few rounds of this, AP gets the last word: “Then you’re going to love me.”
Fucktoys is for people who love trash — the glittery, the sparkly, the outdated, the so-tasteless-it-becomes-absurdly-beautiful. Like a John Waters flick, this one takes place in the absurd alternate reality of exploitation cinema: Cops wear fetish gear, and wherever AP goes, she encounters people in biohazard suits cleaning up toxic spills.
But it’s also an immersive and gorgeous reality, thanks to the painstaking compositions and the 16mm cinematography of Cory Fraiman-Lott. “Trashy” as it may be, Fucktoys is soaked in romanticism. When AP rides through landscapes of alternating lush green fields and bleak refineries and strip malls, the soundtrack full of youthful insouciance, the movie has the buoyant energy of the French New Wave.
AP tends to act on impulse, and Sriram’s acting style vacillates between over-the-top diva stylings and naturalism in a way that can make it hard to get inside the character’s head. As a result, the plot is more of a picaresque than a heroine’s journey, careening from one set piece to another. But well-timed smash cuts and clever coordination of soundtrack and visuals keep us riveted even when we’re disoriented.
In press notes, Sriram says the title Fucktoys began as an “in-your-face gag.” As she struggled with harassment and condescension in her efforts to fund the project, it evolved into “a symbolic act of rebellion against … the industry norms of what I, as a woman, am ‘allowed’ to do.” The movie doesn’t treat sex or sex work as inherently degrading, and that could unsettle some viewers. But for those who like their indie movies genuinely independent, Sriram’s debut is a provocation with substance behind it.
If you like this, try…
Heads or Fails (VTIFF, Friday, October 24, 4:30 p.m., Black Box): A young woman living on the social margins and seeking quick cash is also at the center of this comedy from Belgium.
Zodiac Killer Project (VTIFF, Sunday, October 26, 12:15 p.m., Film House): The lore of true crime figures in Fucktoys and permeates this unconventional documentary in which filmmaker Charlie Shackleton chronicles his struggle to adapt an account of the Zodiac Killer investigation to which he lacks the rights.
A Useful Ghost (VTIFF, Sunday, October 26, 4 p.m., Black Box): Paranormal phenomena also collide with absurdist comedy in the debut of Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, in which a ghost haunts a vacuum cleaner.
This article appears in The Tech Issue 2025.
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