The main and even mesmerizing achievement in Greg Lundgren's film Chat is that he matched the depthlessness of pornographic webcam interactions with the depthless beauty of the leading subject's face (Rosalie Edholm). The attractiveness of her eyes and nose, the complexion of her skin, her lips, her nipples, her body's shape are as flat as the screen on your laptop or smartphone. Hers is an eroticism that has no warmth. To touch her cheek in real life must be like touching the screen in your hand or on your desk. Despite being bright, it hardly has any heat. This is our age of sex without bodies—the beast without two backs. But Chat locks us in time (it's shot in one take) and in space (her living room, which is blandly furnished). We can't surf or open other tabs. We can only watch her trying to make money from the hits of horny eyes on the web. Three real men enter her little world/apartment. One is young and gay (Timothy Rysdyke); two are oldish, straight, and creeps (Curtis Taylor, Doug Nufer). Nothing really happens until near the end, when the movie climaxes with an explosion of pings. Our hero has enough money to pay her rent. From nothing comes something. But this is exactly how the universe is theorized by some physicists. Their mathematics and experiments tell them that nothing is actually active, a kind of ether. There is something pleasant and even soothing about the nothingness of Chat.

Chat plays on Saturday, September 27, at 9 pm as part of the Local Sightings festival at Northwest Film Forum.