Teleport
Criss-crossing the continents, the railway network changed the shape of the world in the mid-nineteenth century, allowing swift, convenient and relatively inexpensive mass transit to distant locations; a hundred years later, aeroplanes again revolutionised travel, making the Earth a smaller place, no place on the globe more than twenty-four hours distant, anywhere in the world accessible in a day, a revolution now amplified to untold levels with the technology which allows instantaneous teleport to any point on the planet – at a cost.
And that cost can be high; while the rich are spoiled, enjoying winter sports during the day before returning to their beach hotel at night, for the poor and desperate disenfranchised millions teleport offers a potential means to escape from their plight, refugees who scrabble and scrape together funds to give to human traffickers who offer to send them to distant lands but with no money-back guarantees and no promises of a warm welcome at their arrival point.
For Anya and Ekaterina, an escape to the west is all that can save them, citizens of the harsh Rasskazovo Federation, formerly Moldova, where same sex relationships are illegal and punishment is punitive; learning English together, their slowly-forming plans are disrupted by a visit from Anya’s disapproving father who betrays them and prompts disaster. With only enough money for one of them to escape, despite the gunshot wound which increases her risk it is Ekaterina who jumps to a supposed safe house, but the women under the care of hostess Orla Miller are expected to work for their keep.
Written and directed by Dustin Curtis Murphy, Teleport (formerly known as Coyote) is a science fiction drama built upon the thin blade of the double edged sword of the novel titular technology; for those who have the means and are under threat, escape can be instantaneous and to anywhere, but so in a flash can armed police arrive in a locked bedroom in the middle of the night, and always it is someone else in control, someone for whom money is the primary motivation rather than humanitarian concerns.
Starring Luther‘s Borislava Stratieva and Stopmotion‘s Therica Wilson-Read as outlawed lovers Anya and Ekaterina, Ailish Symons is cruel madame Orla, Chris Kyriacou is trafficker Vas Niko, Beruce Khan is Richard Baqri aka “Mister Green,” the government immigration minister who is also Orla’s principal client, and Ruhtxjiaïh Bèllènéa is Taraji, the broken woman who believes he loves her, the pieces all on the board for a hard edged and relevant drama which reframes current concerns of immigration and human rights through the lens of science fiction, but after the urgent first act Teleport never recovers its pace.
The mansion where the women are held spacious and luxurious, it becomes as much of a prison as the graffitied concrete block Anya occupied in her homeland, but while the depictions of Orla’s manipulative cruelty masquerading as charity are distressing the situation quickly becomes stagnant and drab, the power of the premise squandered in the rivalries of the captive women in a film which feels bordering on exploitive even as it highlights and represents real world injustices, the complexity of the ideas and issues raised demanding a more rigorous exploration and resolution than is presented.
