Gábor Hörcher’s documentary hasn’t even started, but we’re already hearing that there’s something his female protagonist won’t want to see again in the finished film. The picture we continue with is also telling: Emma Lovett, Serbian-born, professional Internet sex worker who grew up in the United States, and her husband, business and creative partner, Eddie Lovett, are sitting on the floor of their huge Budapest apartment and trying not to kill each other. Both are tormented, both visibly hate the other. After two sentences, the discussion is about who will have to move out of this apartment. Eddie is petty and direct, Emma is on the verge of falling apart. They are our main characters.
Emma and Eddie: Out of the Picture jumps seven years back in time, which we might assume was the good old days. We thought it wrong, the two entrepreneurs dealing with porn and models cannot drive through a highway tunnel without saying passive-aggressive sentences to each other. On the highway, they are on their way to Budapest – the film doesn’t make it clear from where, but from Zagreb anyway – to continue what they started together and what they do best. Namely, to have sex for money in front of others on the Internet, sometimes two, sometimes involving other women. Eddie couldn’t imagine other men being in the videos.
Without even watching it for a second, we could assume that Hörcher’s film is about how deceptive it is to sell ourselves, our time and energy on the Internet, how much it invades a person’s private life, how hypocritical the image we convey of ourselves is. Emma and Eddie, on the other hand, goes much further than that, simply because its main characters are so explosive that after the first minute you can only tensely watch them try not to immediately jump at each other’s throats after each spoken word. The question can quite legitimately arise as to why we should watch them at all, what can be learned as a viewer from following the total destruction of a marriage, and moreover in the shadow of the sex industry.
The basis of camsex is the creation of an illusion: the illusion that the show is made only for the viewer, the illusion that the viewer pays a token for some exclusive viewing, i.e. the viewer has exchanged money, and it is also the illusion that this particular viewer is in control all along. The Lovetts are perfect at creating all kinds of illusions, whether it’s posting on social media or how they raise money for a cam show before the show even starts. Emma and Eddie shows in many scenes how the illusion can be created and dissipated. How the voices and mannerisms of the protagonists change when their sex cams or phone recorders are turned on, how they behave at professional events (there are surprisingly many award ceremonies in the world of camsex), how they immediately start slapping each other as soon as their show is over.
Their tragedy is that the two of them exist in unity on the Internet, the two of them became famous together, but the two of them cannot exist. Based on the film, Emma is manipulative and emotionally unstable – in one scene, the director himself steps out from behind the camera and asks her in a conversation if everything is okay, if the filming can continue. Eddie is petty, aggressive, and childish—like someone playing slapping someone with his own hand even as an adult. There are dark periods in both of their pasts, with domestic violence, self-harm, and troubled parental relationships, which they both can only cope with in their own unique ways. But not with each other. After a while, both get to the point of assault.
A movie has already been made about the Lovett couple, they have also appeared in a TV show and a short documentary. But none of them spanned as long a period of time as Hörcher’s film, in which the disintegration can be followed month by month, season by season over years. It looks like Emma and Eddie went into this film as a way to complement their brand and reach. They both understand how to behave in front of the camera, clothed or unclothed, and when they describe their conflicts, they involuntarily bring up reality shows as an example. That’s how they speak there too, so it’s perfectly fine if they speak like that in life.
Due to the accumulation of realities and illusions, it is impossible to take our eyes off Emma and Eddie. It is sometimes difficult to decide what is manipulation by the actors, what is the signature of the documentary director, which camera the actors are playing to, when they are telling the truth at all. Hörcher does not include anyone else in the film, apart from the two main characters, everyone only gets a sentence or two, but they are also in the same space as the Lovett couple. “Why are you so weird?” a woman who recently had sex with them asks the man, and Eddie keeps joking in front of his wife that he’s going to have a baby for her. In the film, we can often see their videos uploaded to Instagram, about crazy parties and ideal everyday life. Emma once says that she hates filmmakers because they are taking advantage of her. At that moment, I wasn’t sure who was taking advantage of whom.
If it weren’t for this strange tension, then Emma and Eddie would be nothing more than a mixture of disaster and sex tourism. But the sex industry still needs it to work – the bickering and marital conflict of two real estate agents or bank employees would not carry such a charge. And Emma and Eddie really works. It is easy to fall under its influence due to the elegant images, the avoidance of sensationalism and the good rhythm. And then by the end, we’ll learn more about how to poison each other in a relationship than anything else.
Emma and Eddie: Out of the Picture can be seen in select screenings from April 26. With the launch of Max in May, it will be shown on its program.
