“I’ve never seen that,” Thea (Jiana Nicole) says to her sister Julia (Jade Perry) early in “Anything That Moves,” as if it’s a promise of what’s to come as much for an audience as herself in the second feature from Alex Phillips, the director of the gleefully transgressive “All Jacked Up and Full of Worms” in which a sex doll was a catalyst for a real romance between strangers. The dank, dark love motel where that previous film was set couldn’t be further atmospherically from the meadow where Thea and Julia sit, but there’s no question this is a Phillips concoction when Thea notes that as bright as the sun is on a summer’s day, it is somehow less radiant than Julia after experiencing her first orgasm, provided by Thea’s boyfriend Liam (Hal Baum), who it turns out isn’t performing a favor for his girlfriend on her sister’s 18th birthday, but is an experienced professional who is handed a wad of twenties for his troubles. The exchange is innocent enough as a chorus coos in the background, “Ooh la la,” but as “Anything That Moves” wears on, the transaction becomes troublesome as Phillips flips the script on where the outrage should be regarding the act when the sex is seen as only natural, but the instinct to commodify it or attach any other meaning to it beyond what’s between two individuals leads to chaos.
There ends up being plenty of unusual sights in “Anything That Moves,” but it’s how Phillips reconfigures the gaze on familiar ones that is most captivating in the arresting and frisky murder mystery where even the fact that it follows the exploitation of a male sex worker comes as a subversive swap of traditional gender roles. True to his Chicago roots, Liam can be seen riding down the streets of the city in a unitard more likely to adorn a Midwestern wrestler than a bike messenger, but with an opening for his bare chest and the latex leaving nothing to the imagination around his crotch and from the start, he doesn’t appear to be born of reality, but of other movies. His proper introduction as a character — not hidden between the thighs of Julia — is when he arrives at the door of Rachel, a middle-aged housewife, notably played by Ginger Lynn Allen and like so many other delivery boys the legendary pornstar invited in in scenes during her ‘80s heyday, Liam isn’t just there to deliver a pizza. However, he is probably the only one that’s asked if she wanted something to eat afterwards and rather than the sex we’ve just witnessed, it’s the sandwich and small talk they share that seems the most likely to take one aback, speaking to a purity of heart that the world seems intent of robbing him of.
Liam could go away for life after being suspected in a string of murders where the evidence points back to clients he has, all with a calling card of dollar bills with a penis sketched across them, but that isn’t the main intrigue when Phillips makes plain his innocence both in terms of the crimes and in general. Instead, the director is more interested in showing all the corruption elsewhere in the world Liam inhabits and without ever making it an explicit part of the story, makes great use of Chicago where the institutions hold great history but have often been erected at the expense of pushing any dissidents off to the fringes, creating a vibrant underground, as Liam has to traverse both realms. It’s those who have some authority and feel as if they live by the book that come off as freaks in “Anything That Moves,” whether it’s the cops (Jack Dunphy and Frank V. Ross) investigating the murders or Thea and Julia’s father (Paul Gordon), and their pent-up sexuality has had corrosive effects on the people around them, often channeled through Thea, who is implicated along with Liam in the murders and whose carnal relationship with him can show diseased kinks she inherited from her father.
“Anything That Moves” can be occasionally rough to watch in ways both intentional and not, and it’s certainly not for the faint of heart with generous amounts of sex and gore. Cinematographer Hunter Zimny, who has shown a great affection for the grainiest celluloid he can find for films such as “Funny Pages” and “Pet Shop Days,” has a field day in the sweaty summer-set film where intense colors take hold and urban grime is inherent to the frame. At the same time, it can sometimes feel as the considerable style can comes across as overcompensation for whatever limitations the scrappy production may have had on the ground. Still, it’s a rare film that can bend its crude nature into perverse poignance, such as when it turns the euphemism “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s rain” into something literal as Liam finds himself as relieved as the instigator of a golden shower while standing under the fire escape of a building on a particularly sweltering day, and as much as “Anything That Moves” celebrates those who live with abandon and find pleasure without shame, it actively delivers the same delights of operating so freely.
“Anything That Moves” will screen again at Fantasia Fest on July 29th at 11:45 am at Salle J.A. De Seve.