Inevitably recalling Jean Eustache in his 1977 festival short A Dirty Story, Antonio G. Campos's Buy it Now seizes upon a sensationalistic apocryphal event - that of a 16 year old Manhattanite who opts to sell off her virginity on eBay - and tells it twice, in contrasting narrative modes: pseudo-documentary and dramatized indie feature. The story begins in 2004. Chelsea Magan (Chelsea Logan) is 16 and naïve but not so innocent or guileless; a young woman from a broken home, with a detached,
indifferent mother, serious drug addictions and a possible case of anorexia nervosa. One day, she decides to hawk her own chastity on EBay and film the defloration with her mini-DV. All goes according to plan, but Chelsea fails to anticipate the emotional fallout that succeeds her erotic liaison with Peter (Chris McCann); as a consequence, she slits her wrists twice but fails to kill herself. In the second version - a more toned-down, less sensationalistic version of the first - Chelsea and Peter have their initial encounter and Chelsea experiences an emotional crisis upon returning home, at which point her mother insists that she consult her psychoanalyst. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
It's almost an object lesson on how enlarging a short film can be messed up. What a pity that Antonio Campos could not have found a way to start from scratch and grow and develop his story more satisfyingly.
At just over an hour in length and divided starkly into two halves, Buy It Now is a real oddity.It's raw, real and rather effective as a comment on consumerism and alienation in society.
But It Now accomplishes so much in one hour that I wouldn't be surprised if media arts teachers across the country used it as a springboard for class discussion.
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