Fucktoys

"F-cktoys" will be screening in Grand Rapids on Friday, Aug. 14, at Wealthy Theatre. Following the screening will be a Q&A with writer, actor and director Annapurna Sriram.

“Fucktoys” might be the strangest title to play in a Grand Rapids movie theater this year. The smutty debut film of a trained dominatrix uses Rider-Waite tarot cards as a mood board and refashions post-hurricane New Orleans footage to create a philandering pandemonium dystopia called Trashtown. It’s shot on Super 16 mm and has more personality than a rambunctious house party. Missing out on Wealthy Theatre’s screening on Aug. 14, with writer, actor and director Annapurna Sriram present, is a misery best avoided.

The title is both provocative and genius. It won’t be for everyone, and its edgy namesake repels those who would do better to stay away. For those of a certain indecent kindred, the title alone makes the film worth seeing. And that ultimately serves everyone well because the first fifteen minutes features both face-spitting and a golden shower. 

A budget medium played by Big Freedia tells sex worker AP (Sriram) in the middle of a deeply southern swamp, in a proud African American Vernacular, that she is cursed. “Someone cursed the shit out of you… Think about all the stuff that’s been happening,” the medium pleads. “Swingset left you, you know, he dumped you out of nowhere. You cry after sex sometimes. You got lesions on your pussy or whatever.” AP needs $1,000 to lift the curse—since everything is capitalistic now—leading her and Danni (Sadie Scott), a friend she rekindles with by peeing on a man together, on a quest for the liberating funds that leads to increasingly strange customers. 

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