New Review: One Hour Fantasy Girl
Kelly-Ann Tursi and Jon Woodward in “One Hour Fantasy Girl.”
Let me tell you that as one of the screeners for a film festival, I often see many, atrocious “male-fantasy dressed up as a film” films, so when I first saw the title for One Hour Fantasy Girl, despite my best attempt to remain objective, I went into the film thinking, oh boy, here we go again.
But I could not have been more wrong.
In fact, what director/writer Edgar Michael Bravo and producer John Paul Rice have made is a challenging look at a 20-year old female struggling to overcome her childhood and finding a way to succeed, sometimes making bad choices, sometimes being too trusting, but learning to find her inner strength.
Yeah, sounds a bit Lifetime, right? But it is not.
Due to a quite interesting script, with only the minor of flaws (I wanted to see the police enter the scene at some point in this film), outstanding performances from most of the actors, and fairly strong production value, One Hour Fantasy Girl is a unique indie that looks into the seedy underworld of paying others to live out fantasies.
Kelly-Ann Tursi, the lead fantasy girl, is quite the phenomenal actress. Gritting her teeth and baring what comes at her, she manages to tell much of her pain through a steely-jaw but expressionistic eyes. Nearly welling up with tears at many a tragedy in her life, she’s tough and setbacks only keep her down for a moment. Since most of what her character is dealing with is internal, it was quite interesting to watch her as she fought to not let down her guard.
Convinced by Chi Trang, her partner (or in the more seedier version of her job, her pimp), to make money by playing out the fantasies of men, she goes on board with some set ground rules, no kissing, no sex and what she is doing with them has to be legal. In comes three men who hire her for various reasons.
Jon Morgan Woodward plays the seediest of the three, acting out infancy and masochistic fantasies, his character, Roger, is the driving force behind Chi who is wanting to break into the music industry and can only do so if he finds a girl to fuel Roger’s fetishes. Joe Luckay plays Bobby, a boy who tells her he wants to take her away from her pain. Then there is Sal, played by John Buckley Gordon, who lends quite the comic touch to the film, often making business calls as he acts out his fantasy with her. 
But the fantasy girl, Becky Lewis (Tursi), is also trying to escape reality. She uses spirituality and a local diner as tools of escapism from her drab existence, not too far off from what the men who pay her are doing with her. Instead she pays the local diner people to sit all night so she has somewhere to not be alone and to ground her into what she considers normalcy.
While there is never anything overtly sexual about what she is doing, in a way living out their fantasies is somehow more intrusive, more intimate, than prostitution. Its not a physical disconnected experience but an hour that gets to the heart of their desires, needs, even their childhood wounds. 
Her story moves away from the typical movie version of a ‘fantasy girl’ and instead embraces a more realistic approach. This is not Pretty Woman, there is no Richard Gere waiting to save you at the end. Instead, there are con artists, perverts and a lot of people judging you by what you do.
Yet, despite what Becky does for a living, Bravo has written her as so likeable and determined, that you can’t help but root for her. But I wonder, since producer John Paul Rice said the core audience for the film thus far has been 14-30 year-old females, what message comes across to them? Will they take away just how awful is the life she has chosen, or will they see the way in the end her choices led to her where she really wanted to end?
