A trailer has dropped for Numa Perrier’s feature debut. Based on the writer-director’s own experiences, “Jezebel” sees Tiffany (Tiffany Tenille), a cash-strapped 19-year-old, following up on a job ad asking for “internet models.” Nudity is required and the gig involves “great pay.” She lands a job working as a fetish cam girl online.
“Just show off a little bit,” Tiffany is urged. “Make money — you can do what you want to do.” Others wonder aloud if the teen can “get in trouble” for her job. Tiffany herself seems to have misgivings about her work.
“‘Jezebel’ is my true story,” Perrier told us. “It shows the slice of life when I lived with my sister in Las Vegas. She helped me discover and grow into my womanhood and sexuality when she introduced me to internet sex work in the late ’90s. The world wide web was very new then and her work as a phone sex operator was shifting into the digital space,” she recalled. “She felt I would thrive there and be able to gain financial independence – in other words stop living with her, her boyfriend, her toddler, and our brother in a little studio weekly apartment called the Budget Suites.”
Perrier added, “The film is shot in dual tones. There are two locations: the apartment and the private sex chat rooms. I wanted to show the contrast and complexities of fantasy vs. reality and how those spaces shaped me. At this time, we were also grieving the death of our mother. I dealt with this as a filmmaker with a surreal, almost experimental, approach where we never see the mother, a hospital, or a funeral. The family loss is the backdrop, their survival is the foreground.”
“Jezebel” made its world premiere at SXSW in March. Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing recently acquired the pic. The drama will hit Netflix January 16 and open theatrically in New York, Los Angeles, and other select cities sometime that month.
