Escape Line 2.0’s – As Stated on the Semiotics …

The independently produced feature film Escape Line 2.0 has unique characteristics of a hybrid genre between reality and fiction and portrays the intimacy of two characters, a man and a woman, who randomly relate anonymously over the internet.

“Escape Line 2.0” and “Escape Line” are two feature films with completely different approaches. They were made out of the same script and dialogues, having as a common trace the fact that the actors never knew who they were acting opposite to, which increased the arousal and the desire of the players, catapulting them into the same situation the characters originally are. During all the rehearsals and shooting the actors “act together” over the Internet, using nicknames and with the webcam off, never revealing themselves to each other.

As stated on the semiotics, the representation is always in the place of something.  Said that, Escape Line 2.0, regardless of its veracity, invokes something it’s manifested itself on the progress of the scene as a casual relationship between a man and a woman over the internet, a dialogue that seems to have the sole purpose of sexual pleasure.

At first, what happens throughout this conversation may seem analogous to any kind of pornography easily seen on any kind of media. The conversation via virtual reality provides each character an anonymous partner whose identity can be complemented and idealized by fantasy.

Since this is cinema, the audience will hear the voices of the actors and see their homes and offices but on Escape Line 2.0 they will never see the faces of the characters making clear and very sensitive the fact that on the relationship between these two people, the body is missing and you never know for sure how the other person’s face is in the case that this is not revealed via a webcam. Through words, voice tones, rhythms and phonemes, both characters pursue forcibly an interaction between two bodies. There is, after all, a lack of something that needs to be supplied with an appropriate language.

The fact that this is an intentional separation with the purpose of obtaining a pleasure without risk and without self-consciousness suggests, gradually, the impossibility of communication. No touch, no stains the sheets, no facing the imperfections of each other, in this case, the dramatic movements are found in the rare silences or empty and lost looks of the characters. Look without seeing, touching him/herself instead of reaching out towards the other person are acts that are aligned to form the perspective of a behavior that is both sexual and affective.

The refusal to human touch is the current uneasiness of our civilization but it is especially relevant to revisit this issue when we have available so many and efficient means to mediate this contact with the another person, whether it takes place through Facebook, Tinder, WhatsApp or many others.

And sex is an eloquent example of this voluntary self-banishment. Over the last centuries, pornography challenged and compensated for what was considered forbidden and taboo however the relative sexual freedom of today seems to be constantly looking for limits to impose new frustrations upon itself.

A reflection on the disturbance during times of multi-connected hedonism with no resentment attached to it, in which the main motivation is the self-fulfillment.

A safe eroticism in technological times.