A broken home. A leather couch. July of 1999, sixth months before the anticipated “Y2K” hysteria that disturbed the oncoming millennia. Abbie (Joshua Burge), sitting on a sun-dried leather couch, attempts to drink an entire gallon of half-spoiled milk as part of another “challenge” given to him by his brother Cam (David Dastmalchian).
On the verge of vomiting, Abbie wants to give up (again), but being glued to the television screen playing Nintendo dampens the pain that comes alongside his brother’s challenges. His eyes grow increasingly sunken and sickly while the sticky, summer air seeping into the room rapidly spoils the milk, but as long as Abbie has his video game, he can endure. At least it seems so.
Enter the vulgar minimalism of “Relaxer,” directed by Joel Potrykus. Offset by Abbie’s learned helplessness, Cam issues him one last, ultimatum before the rumored Y2K goes down: stay glued to the couch until he passes the elusive level 256 in Pac Man with no bathroom breaks, no answering the door, nothing. Abbie confidently accepts Cam’s quest, but little does he know that his brother will not be returning for several months. Nevertheless, as the transgressive author under the pseudonym Supervert once said in their book Post-Depravity, “reclusiveness itself may be a kind of violence. It leaves an abyss for us to throw our fantasies into.”
Under this pretense, the entirety of “Relaxer” follows Abbie’s descent into his video game obsession and struggle in completing the challenge issued to him as he must survive inside a rotten room devoid of food or water.
Offset by the rumblings of a “digital age” and the Y2K, the nineties were unmistakably characterized by Generation X trappings; a tailspin of disillusionment and as a result, human depravity, which is exemplified in absolute absurdity with Potrykus’ latest film. The follow-up project to “The Alchemist Cookbook,” which also focused on a degenerate outcast, the claustrophobic, single-set “Relaxer” invites an abundance of metaphorical readings.
Dripping in existential philosophy, if there is one thing “Relaxer” confidently expresses, it’s that life is an endurance test in which we are given the choice to live hollowly waiting for meaning, or to live and make our own destiny through choice. Abbie is stuck in between these two extremes. He is determined to beat this Pac Man Challenge, win its 100,000 dollar prize and move to California where his estranged father resides. However, Abbie’s unwillingness to surrender his addictive and self-destructive ways inhibits him from ever doing so, hence the slew of repulsive images which are a result of him not once leaving the couch in six months.
With Portrykus’ keen eye for absurdism and dismal world-building, the result of “Relaxer” is a provoking and compelling tale of existential dread of the nineties-era suburban lifestyle.
This level of idleness portrayed in “Relaxer” brings to mind the similar quandary in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Published in 1952, Waiting for Godot made waves as an examination of the perpetual state of delay and anticipation, and lack of autonomy. Similarly, “Relaxer” delivers the motif of immobility but urges whomever the targeted audience is, to make “the now” count rather than wait to be saved. Unfortunately, the awkward Abbie reflects this hopeless bridge between nineties disillusionment and the superficiality brought by the digital age to come. Moreover, his masochistic, self-imprisonment captures the presumed message — get off the couch and do something with your life.
Considering the effective ingraining nature of Potrykus’s films like SXSW hit “Buzzard” and his previous film,”The Alchemist’s Cookbook,” it’s unsurprising that “Relaxer” does not deviate in terms unwaveringly dismal tone and atmosphere. As the plot of “Relaxer” dwindles to a close, so does Abbie as he wallows in vomit, fecal matter, and insecticide. The viewer grows frustrated as a result, not just because of the slew of nauseating images at hand, but because all that Abbie has to do to escape his situation is give up and get up.
Fumigated by the desire to survive, but with an equitable impulse to prove his brother wrong, Burdge (a Potrykus fixture) is stellar as Abbie. He’s repulsive to look at with sweat glistening off his pasty white chest and his bulging, bag-ladened eyes glaring into the viewers.’ Abbie convincingly makes you pity his hopeless situation not because he dwindles down to bed sores, but because in the end, all he wanted was to reconnect with his dad.
But do not let this slight glimmer of sorrow diminish the film’s overall vulgarity. With “Relaxer” shifting from comedic survival story to absurdist horror in its third act, it’s at this point in the story where Potrykus has sold his film to the audience. “Relaxer” prevails as an unbearable survival story (which is weird to say, given the film’s quirky premise) that devises an unsettling experience due to its “Gummo”-lite foulness.
Beneath the film’s grunge and characteristically dingy aura, the daring Potrykus proves once again why he is one of the most promising young filmmakers and provocateurs around, as he wields weighty commentary, an extremely limited setting and a darkly comedic turn of events to his advantage. “Relaxer” is Potrykus’ most discomforting and unforgettable experience to date. [A-]
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