So if you have some unresolved issue or pain from your past, what’s the harm in doing a little real life role play to help unburden the weight. Well, that’s what the Dairi Agency provides in Sophia Banks’ film called Proxy, and in suspenseful foreboding, the 15 minute short examines how denial can keep us standing still.
Victoria (Emma Booth) is a Proxy and is simply referred to as number 7527. We are introduced while she prepares for her latest role.
Rehearsing before a mirror, Victoria diligently throws herself into the part, and this time, she’s a neglectful ambitious mother. One who selfishly left her son alone with a sexually abusive uncle, and her proxy is ready with the prerequisite level of guilt. She also understands the psychosis of the severely comprised adult and prepares to play off her client’s denial. “That’s a good boy,” 7527 runs her lines.
Victoria’s subsequent smirk lets us know she not only has reservations about this role but probably all her others. The sheer eeriness that Shaw Jones exudes as the perversely childlike Christopher reinforces her disgust, although complete aversion is not enough to take her out of character. “I know you’re a good man. Society just doesn’t understand how special you are,” Victoria provides the cover Christopher needs.
Shaw’s gleeful acceptance of Victoria’s manufactured consent takes the slime up a notch and sends us all in need of shower. Booth is not immune either, and the wear reads clearly upon the discharge of her duties. Even so, Victoria has her own personal doubts, and the need for self affirmation isn’t just a prescription for her clients.
The change back to herself goes off without a hitch, and Booth’s diverse acting chops still require several more iterations before the drama is done. 7527 presses on nonetheless, and it turns out that carrying a guilty conscience isn’t the only risk of her chosen field.
A client demographic that seeks comfort by validating their past mistakes through proxy can be easily unhinged when the passion play doesn’t absolve. So this time Victoria must disengage before the third act with Stanley( Madison Mason) and flee for safety.
She’s still her own worst enemy, and the ominously calculating score by James Burkholder enhances the toll that the profession is taking on Victoria. The stakes also seem to escalate with each home setting, and the palatial estate of “the next Steve Jobs” definitely moves the drama up the ladder.
Thus, Samantha puts it to her proxy by turning the mirror. The scene going “off script,” Erika Christensen exerts a chill over the screen, and Victoria has no choice but to reveal the failing that keeps her playing the ever-changing role.
Samantha’s heartless insistence that 7527 “get out” really stings. But maybe Victoria will take the hint and find a real redress for her problems. You know, like getting a therapist who begins a treatment plan and sets a course to release the trauma that is holding her back.
Of course, her clients aren’t as lucky, and the market niche that the Dairi Agency has found is as dystopian as they come. It’s a business model that sycophant seeking leaders know all too well and so do the multitudes who seek entourages to normalize their antisocial behavior.
In short, if your bad behavior can’t find enablers, the agency can. So even the solitary can avoid and deny, and ultimately, Victoria plays both ends. Her shortcomings lend themselves to giving and receiving destructive reinforcement, and the collision course set by Proxy really delivers the message.
