Customer Reviews

Alexandra's Project

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Many others have already reviewed the plot, so I will stay away from that. I just saw it at our the Cleveland International Film Festival. The director / writer was in attendance for a Q&A after the film.

De Heer claimed that he strived for balance in the two characters when making the film. He also admitted that most people who see the film do not see much balance. He also said that feminist groups were the main advocates for the film.

After watching I came to two conclusions on his intentions.
1. The only balance that I saw is that in the beginning she is miserable and at the end he is miserable.
2. I cant see how any feminst group would get behind this movie. DeHeer portrays this woman as a crazy b#$%#. She is vengeful, she is a whore (literaly), she abuses drugs, and probably worst of all she kidnaps their children.

I would hate to meet the kind of people that support this lunatic. Any feminst that supports a person like this needs a check up from the neck up. This women is evil and in real life she would lose both of those kids to the father. Dont mistake me here, the father is no choir boy himself. He certainly has his vices and the writer makes sure you know that. But by the end their is only one victim.

As a movie it is very well written and clever. It is a plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat for what will happen next. It ends on a down note with a little humor built in to soften some of the blow.

In whole it is a film that is worth seeing. It will keep your interest and leave you thinking....

This film will definitely not appeal to everyone. It is emotionally and sexually brutal, and the weak of heart or stomach should stick to Hillary Duff flicks, or perhaps a good clean slasher film. When I saw a 'sneak preview' a few days ago, not one walked out during the film but there was a stunned and silent exodus after. The closest I can come to its raw impact are Peter Greenaway films such as "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover", though "Alexandra's Project" is simpler and more personal. It compels you to watch even as it makes it uncomfortable to do so.

The film starts out easily, though with some forebodings of camera angle and incident. Steve (Gary Sweet) wakes up in an Australian suburb on his birthday; his charming children give him some presents, and his wife Alexandra (Helen Buday) tells him that a surprise will be waiting him when he comes home. It seems an idyllic scene, but .... When Alexandra wants to pay a bill, Steve forcefully reminds her the accounts are his ... their row house has been fitted with deadbolt locks and automated security shutters (doubly jarring in free and open Australia) ... Steve curses a sinister neighbor out watering the communal lawn. At work, Steve is called into the boardroom ... sweatingly unsure if he is to be fired or promoted (perhaps, we think, his controlling nature at home stems from lack of control at work?). But it is good news, and he goes home ready to celebrate ...

... only to find an empty, dark and shuttered house, the light bulbs removed and a video tape on the TV saying "watch me". Pretty creepy, but when he puts it in it's a birthday present -- Alexandra informing him the children are staying with a relative and then doing an amateurish striptease for the camera as Steve has a beer (at the tape's suggestion) and enthusiastically watches. Then she stops, not quite naked, and sits down to vent her anger and frustration at her life and him. When he tries to escape, he finds he is cleverly locked in by all those security devices, and he is forced to continue, gradually becoming drunker, distress playing on his face.

It would be too much of a spoiler to describe what happens next, but there are several surprises as the tension builds and a sad and enigmatic ending. It becomes over the top at times, but in a way that is the point. We don't know if Alexandra is being logical and rational, reacting to a desperate situation, or overreacting out of dementia or paranoia.

Buday's is a bravura performance, as she chews up the scenery and convincingly plays a woman who is (justifiably or not) not about to take it any more. Sweet's performance is less overtly dramatic, but excellent in the play of emotion on his face as he gradually dissolves in pity and horror. Both actors take great risks. It is remarkable that each is alone, Buday/Alexandra speaking to camera while Sweet/Steve must act passively and receptively.

Women in the audience will undoubtedly sympathize with Alexandra's grievances and frustrations, while men will likely see her taped monologue as a metaphor for women's desire to have the men in their lives as mute objects, receiving an angry harangue without rebuttal. Many will be disgusted or horrified, but few will be left unaffected.

I'm giving this a high rating because it really IS a superbly done movie that kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time. Tense, disturbing, well-acted. This is a story of one woman unhappy in her marriage, who cooks up a rather original (and extreme) act of revenge against her husband. Most of the film is him watching the VCR tape she's made for him. What throws me off a bit is that I can't quite understand the message behind the film. It comes very close to being nothing more than hateful feminist drivel (and if it was directed by a woman, it would have probably led me to assume just that). If doesn't even attempt to state that the husband was in fact completely deserving of what the wife did to him. Apparently, the only thing this poor man is guilty of is high libido. He doesn't abuse his wife. He's a good father to his kids. He's a good provider. She implies he's cheating, but there's nothing in the film to substantiate this claim. His only sin is that he's constantly horny for his wife - well, I'll be damned! Any woman who can say her husband lusts after her a decade or more after he married her should feel very fortunate. I'm female, and I found myself rooting for the husband every step of the way. I HATED the female lead. Whether or not this was the director's intention, I'm not sure. I felt it was a drawback for me. But as I said, genre-wise this is a fantastically done film in every respect. Therefore, four stars.

Steve and Alexandra live a middle class existence with their two children in Australia. On Steve's birthday Alexandra concocts an truly unique suprise. Steve comes home from work to find a video tape labeled "play me". On the tape Alexandra lays out her complaints about the marriage-they're pretty typical-feelings of abandonment, lack of sexual fulfillment, lack of intimacy, no control over the direction of her life. One of her biggest complaints is that Steve "married her body" and made love at her, not with her. In an attempt to regain control of her body and her life Alexandra does some sexually perverse things on the tape to humiliate both Steve and the "body" he married.

Australians are supposed to be the most optimistic people in the world, but you'd never know it from watching this movie. This film makes Revolutionary Road [Theatrical Release] look melodramatic. Alexandra's Project is an almost too true look at the devastating psychological damage that occurs when unhappy marriages are left to spiral out of control. This film's suspense played like Funny Games, but had a plot something like The War of the Roses without one gram of humor.

Alexandra's Project demonstrates that people will go to any length to destroy a spouse that's made them unhappy, even if they destroy themselves in the process.

Highly recommended, but be mentally prepared to watch one of the darker films about marriage you'll see in your life.

Footnote: I watched this movie shortly after watching Revolutionary Road and it was interesting to compare how the wives in each of these films dealt with their unhappy marriages.

Steve's birthday started well enough. While still in bed his kids gave him hugs and high fives. At work his colleagues had a cake with candles and his boss gave him a promotion. And his wife Alexandra promised him a surprise in the evening. Some surprise. The film opens with a camera panning through the winding road of a sterile suburb, and soft, discordant music. The very first sentence of the film belongs to Alexandra as she is alone in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror: "I'm so sorry, Steve. . . NO! I'm not sorry! No one should ever be sorry to stand up for their own self!"The rest of the film then takes place in the living room as Steve watches the "surprise" birthday tape that Alexandra made before she left him. Her powerfully manipulative monologue to Steve takes him on a roller coaster of emotions straight to hell: humor, disbelief, regret, sadness, pity, anger, rage, and finally despair. "You didn't marry me, Steve," she tells him, "you married my body." And so she makes it clear just how a marriage devoid of affection, intimacy, and mutual respect had made her feel. This film is hard to watch because it is without nuance. Alexandra is one deeply angry and cruel woman, but if what she says about Steve is true you empathize with her anyway.

Amazon is quite gracious in allowing reviewers the chance to rate the worst movies with only 1 star. I have to say that this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I must disagree with my other reviewers and state that if this is Rolfie boy's feminine side, I wish he wouldn't have found it in the first place.

Actually, this movie is a feminist fantasy wrapped up in a pseudo-intellectual skirt posing as a commentary on contemporary relationships. If Rolf wants to make porno, he should just make porno and not call it art! Also, he should not be preaching to us about how bad men are, enough already!

The main character is a shallow, sad excuse for a woman and a mother. Whatever happened to talking to your partner and telling them, 'I'm not happy and what are we going to do about it?' But NOOOO! Ms. Alexandra has to become a hooker to get back at the man who she said, "Married my body." And what did she marry? Is her husband fat, ugly, an ogre, does he look like Shrek on crack? Quite the opposite, he is a normal guy - just like 75% of the men out there, he's nothing special.

Overall, Rolf de Heer must have been drunk when he made this piece of fetid tripe. If you like man-hating movies get it, if you want social commentary and entertainment, look elsewhere.

Tour de force film from two truly superb actors. At first I was wary because the plot sounded dull and monotonous but I was at the edge of my seat the whole time even though most of the movie is just Steve watching a video, as other reviewers have noted. Both Gary Sweet and Helen Bunday do fantastic jobs of conveying their characters' emotions from start to finish. Had these two not been so superb, the movie would have miserably failed, but they push it to some wild psychological limits, leading me to give this 5 stars. It's a difficult job to carry a movie on your shoulders like this, especially for Bunday who has to act on camera...for a camera (if that makes any sense..). Steve and Alexandra are having one-sided conversations and the actors had to emote and express without a live person to do it with - this just made it even more powerful and striking. It was an intimate and voyeuristic view of a seemingly-fine suburban marriage, and it was a wild exciting and thought-provoking ride.

There's no denying that Alexandra's Project is a disappointment coming from Rolf de Heer, who made the superb The Tracker, one of the best Australian films of the decade. It's extremely well crafted and hides its low budget quite ingeniously, but unfortunately the birthday surprise that Gary Sweet gets from wife Helen Buday doesn't really hold together if you shake the package too much. Partially it's because the punishment seems far in excess of the crime, partially because you get the feeling that Rolf de Heer has been reading feminist literature just to compile a shopping list of grievances (most of them valid), but mainly because the holes in logic get bigger as the revenge grows out of proportion to the offence until the somewhat ridiculous climax: it's simply not credible even within the framework of the film. But the real problem is that you end up feeling sympathy for the husband for having the misfortune to marry so such wacko, which clearly is not the idea.

There's still much to admire. De Heer sustains the suspense as to what exactly will happen while creating a plausible air of impending dread, the distortion from the anamorphic lenses on doorways and corridors adding to the sense that something's definitely off here, while Sweet is outstandingly good in a role that requires mainly reaction shots from an armchair. Buday is impressive too, but it's more an impressive "performance" with odd moments of truth rather than an entirely convincing human being in the way that Sweet's character is - more a fault of the agenda-led writing of her scenes than her own commendably brave efforts.

The Australian special edition boasts a good selection of extras - 61-minute Q&A session with De Heer, half-hour documentary, trailer and stills gallery.

The general plot has been covered by other reviewers so I'll skip to the chase. While the film does deliver the promised shock values, there are just too many contrivances, which make this film totally unbelievable, beyond the scope of say a `willing suspension of disbelief'. And intelligent it certainly is not. The first plot blunder, and this is a deal-breaker: is that when he gets home from work and realizes he is locked in, he just sits down and watches the video. Now I don't know about you folks, but the minute I found myself locked into my own house, light bulbs removed, furniture stacked in the corners, wife and kids missing, locks on doors changed, and especially finding my cell phone battery replaced by a bullet(!), I'd be busting down the windows and the walls if need be to get out of there. I'd be taking that video tape straight to the police to finish it there and figure out what happened to my family. At that point any reasonable person has enough information to know that his family was either killed or kidnapped, that the video tape was possibly made at gunpoint. Whatever the case there is absolutely no question, five minutes in that something is horribly horribly wrong. The bullet is the icing on the cake and anyone with half a brain cell would be running for the hills.

So after seeing all this, his sitting down, smoking a cigarette, having a beer, and watching this video which takes up the rest of the film, all feels very much contrived. It's completely against all human instinct and creates a strong tension that the film definitely feeds off of, but unfortunately its a *false* tension which the movie does not deserve and left me through the rest of the film going "please, this is just dumb, take the tape, get out of there!"

The next layer of false tension, and this is really the broken backbone of the movie, does not come from any intelligent plot or crafty camerawork, but rather just from the pure shock value of everything the wife says and does on film. Its definitely shocking and I give the film two stars just for the shock value, but its all just so unbelievable. It's just not plausible in any way that somebody could be so very smart and so very well spoken and feel so very much abused *every day* and yet so completely fail for all those years to convey these feelings to their partner. In real life, 13 years earlier in the marriage she would have slapped his hand one night and said `I don't appreciate your touching me like that'. End of story.

Another layer I just can't buy, the film goes on and on about how he married her for her body, well what did she marry him for?! There is no allusion at all to his having changed over time, so what gives?

Bottom line, this is another shallow female revenge flick where the woman's horrific acts are justified by the man's density and inability to understand, fueled by false tensions, and ending in his lying down and giving up (once again, oh please).

There is nothing more intelligent to the shock value here than what you'd see in Reservoir Dogs. Shocking yes, intelligent no. But where Reservoir Dogs had no pretenses of being intelligent or thoughtful and was therefore a solid film in its own right, this one falls flat. If you are just looking for cheap shock factor, check it out, but if you're looking for an intelligent, believable suspense-drama look elsewhere.

Ok...
Based on the reviews I've read, my girlfriend and I decided to rent this one from the library. One hundred and three mintues later, we were both emotionally drained and still wondering what the hell did we just view.
My girlfriend picked up the DVD case sitting next to us and flipped it over to view the back of it. She read aloud, "The Toronto Star said this is 'a movie that will leave few men unrattled and many women vicariously satisfied.'" She then turned to me and said, "'Vicariously satisfied?' What unwanted, unloved bitch had the gall to write that statement?"
In this day and age of "femme fatale"/Thelma and Louise movies, this one is full of bark AND bite, leaving very little else for anything but conversation when its over. I'm sure that that's what the director, Rolf de Heer, wanted to have happen among couples who watch this movie. The funny thing is there would not of been a movie if the main characters DID what de Heer expects his viewers to do: TALK.
Instead, we're treated to a woman, who, though sane, is DEFINATELY not rational. During her "project", it is implied that her husband, Steve, may of had affairs within the marriage, will not let her have money, will not let her take control of any bills, and, if assuming that everything she tells us through videotape is true, he's not emotionally there for her. But that in no way justifies the actions for which she'll take all in a single night to "explain" herself to him. The result leaves one with a bad taste in their mouth after being witness to her anger at and liberation from Steve.
My girlfriend and I will go to the middle and give this movie three stars. It is a well written, extremely well acted film. However.....
Any woman leaving this film 'vicariously satisfied' had better examine their own relationships if this is the kind of film that evokes that emotion from you.
Quick sidenote: Ok....I gave it three stars. But my girlfriend says I'm being too generous.