Alexandra's Project

What a cruel demented movie this is, from the same distributors as "Wolves in the Snow", one of my favorite thrillers this year without a doubt. This Australian movie is much different, as it is about a man, Steve, celebrating his birthday. His morning starts with happy birthday stuff from his lovely family and his pretty wife Alexandra. But before leaving for work, his Wife tells him her main birthday present for him will be when he returns from work. He goes to work thinking everything is rosy, has a great day, they have a surprise party for him, and then he gets called in and receives a promotion. WOW, Steve is definitely having a great birthday, and he still has his lovely Wife's surprise gift to look forward to. When he arrives home, everything is dark, all the light bulbs have been removed, nobody is in sight, not his children, not his Wife, nobody. Furniture has been turned upside down, and Steve is still thinking Alexandra is playing a cute little joke on him and searches around his home, but finds nothing UNTIL!!!! In one room, he finds a package from his wife with a videotape inside, with a label that says "play me". His easy chair is all ready for him, with a VCR and television waiting. When he starts playing the tape, his Wife gives him a happy birthday message, and then goes into a slow strip tease for him, and Steve is smiles from ear to ear. BUT, things go rapidly downhill from there, and before long, Steve is starting to wish this whole thing is a bad nightmare. Steve gets subjected to remorse, deception and revenge, and then even a bigger shock, as the tape stops, but the video feed continues revealing that the next portion is indeed live, and he is locked in his house. This is a one of a kind psycho-sexual thriller, and I have never seen a movie like this before, and it had me mesmerized to say the least. It goes all the way from being highly erotic, to down right as mean spirited as hell. The studio that is putting these movies out, is the first to release award winning movies at theaters and on DVD at the same time. And based on the only two I have seen so far, the movies are remarkable. The subscription service is located at www.filmmovement.com , and definitely deserves attention.

An ambitious film, which continues in the tradition of De Heer's fearless tackling of issues which began with the confronting "Bad Boy Bubby". Despite "Alexandra's Project's" interesting premise, the film fails to sustain emotional impact on the viewer, thanks to the scant nature of the plot. In what boils down to be one woman's tirade against her partner's sexual aggression, this film is so heavily weighted towards her own perspective, the viewer is never emotionally complicit, because the film fails to deliver a full and realistic portrait of the marriage. We briefly witness the family's interaction, but after that, we are left to consume Alexandra's bitterness - and believe it.

Gary Sweet delivers a raw and emotional performance, and Helen Buday as Alexandra is polished and convincing. Her character, however, is two dimensional, and, by the end, the viewer is left in a state of not caring about her actions. Add to this Alexandra's unbelievable and unjustified final torment, and you are left with a film which had a fantastic concept at its core, but sustains only a mildly successful delivery.

For a good De Heer film, get "The Tracker", which is more subtle, and a more accomplished piece overall.

"Alexandra's Project" begins masterfully, setting a dark and heavy mood long before the plot reveals itself. When the plot does reveal itself, it is done craftily, piece by piece, as if you were a bird being led into a trap one crumb at a time. This is exactly how the main character is trapped also.

For the first hour I loved this film and couldn't believe I had never heard of such an intelligent thriller before. This abruptly turned when the complex story quickly unravelled to a cheap rip off of every bad Hollywood cat-and-mouse flick ever made.

How did this happen? Because the lead character who, for the first half of the movie, was shown to be smart, resourceful and level-headed, turns into a whiskey swilling moron, gets drunk and spends the the last half of the movie soaking in self-pity while not taking the obvious actions to fix the situation.

That's what I mean in my title. You will be so aggravated at how dense the main character becomes that you will likely hurl your popcorn at the screen in disgust. Like in those cheap slasher flicks when the murderer is hiding in the house, and somehow the idiot victim decides it's a good idea to go into that dark room anyway. Cheap thrills are fun in cheap movies, but I was led to expect a bit more from this award-winning film.

The message of the film itself, offensive as it may be to some, wasn't what bothered me. The movie ridicules feminism by portraying the villain as a rabid, man-hating, feminist psycho. But my gripe isn't about that. My gripe is the fact that the villain's plan turned out to be totally half-baked, and only a total dolt would play into it. A simple call to the cops, and all the bad guys could've been traced, rounded up and punished. But no, instead let's get plastered on whiskey and feel sorry for ourselves until the end of time. As others have commented, the characters and their actions defy sensibility.

I actually recommend that you watch this film so you'll see how a great idea can come apart with shoddy writing. This movie will probably leave you feeling sickened, not by the plot or the director's message but simply by the director's ability to ruin an otherwise good idea. Four stars out of 10, only because it did keep me interested for an hour.

Whats wrong with this film isn't that de Heer has not lived up to the promise (or is that premise) that BAD BOY BUBBY offered. Its not Gary Sweet's lack of persuasive acting talents, its not even a directoral fault especially...its just that it doesn't damn well matter or even vaguely qualify as an "entertaining" near 2 hours!

Like, what's the point here? who cares about Alexandra's sexual dissatisfaction?...I can go to any suburb in Sydney and have this re-enacted. My question IS..with the wealth of talent this man HAS, why is he f------ around with a non-event of a storyline such as this?

It intrigues me....something the film had no hope of achieving!

The movie was perfectly shot. I was nervous and afraid from beginning to end. The director brought me along every step of the story. The acting is spectacular. What shocked me the most about this movie is the utter, pure hate. I have one question though: what is wrong with Anglo-Saxon culture? What inspired Rolf De Heer to write a story about a woman who hates her husband so much that she wants to humiliate, debase, destroy and keep him from his own children forever. I understand that she would want to get back at him for having humiliated and neglected her but not want him killed alive. I've noticed that women in Anglo-Saxon movies can be protrayed as extremely hatefull and vendictive. This movie made me realise how bad things could become between two people. If anyone wants to get married they should first see this movie. Then if they still want to, they will have been forewarned.