Alexandra's Project

[Rolf De Heer, 2003, Australia, rating: MA, running time: 103 minutes]

Alexandra’s Project opens in the strange half-light of early morning, camera tracking low through suburbia. An ominous electronic pulse builds among the waking sounds of insects, birds, animals. Welcome to another dark suburban vision by director Rolf De Heer.

Steve (Gary Sweet) wakes in one of a string of identical townhouses to his two happy children jumping on to his bed with his birthday presents. His wife Alexandra (Helen Buday) has been up for a few minutes, spitting on her reflection in the bathroom mirror with a mixture of determination and self-loathing. The pressure of something trying to break through the surface tension of this apparently ordinary family is palpable.

De Heer scatters clues (or red herrings?) in these first few minutes. We guess that Steve is responsible for the house’s high security – electronic locking blinds, chains and deadlocks. He apparently pays all the household bills. His physical presence around Alexandra seems to intimidate her. Next-door neighbour Bill (Bogdan Koca) presents an absurd if strangely ominous figure. The film presents many questions of meaning and interpretation – not all of which are answered, or even answerable.

Steve leaves for his work as a human resources manager in the city, while Alexandra prepares his birthday surprise for that night. He arrives home to a darkened, empty house with a fridge full of beer, and a videotape from Alexandra. Even these peculiar events take time to shake Steve’s conviction that his suburban reality is inviolable. But the videotaped birthday greetings from his wife and children soon take a dark turn. Alarmed, he realises that his key won’t unlock the doors from the inside, that the blinds are locked closed, and there is no escape from watching his wife’s ‘project’ until the very end.

Alexandra’s tape makes compelling viewing. Like Steve, the viewer is locked in their chair by her saying, and doing, some extremely confronting things. Alexandra’s theme is not unfamiliar, voicing something hidden in many relationships – the lack of communication, sexual intimacy, trust and respect. In this final conversation between them, Alexandra finds her voice, Steve listens, and a genuinely visceral response is forced from him - speaking, crying, shouting in pain at the taped revelations. It is tragic, we at first think, that Alexandra cannot see his reaction to her savage performance.

Rolf De Heer originally planned the idea of a woman talking to a video camera as a possible film to be made for less than $200,000. Eventually, it was shot in a studio for $2m. Studio shooting has allowed the film-makers quite a creative use of light and shadow, a key element in the film’s imprisonment theme. Just under a third of the shoot was devoted to the video footage of Helen Buday who operated the camera herself, as Alexandra would have done. The footage reveals an emotionally and sexually explicit performance that several other actresses ultimately couldn’t bring themselves to take on. Gary Sweet did not see the video footage until the film camera rolled on his character’s reaction to it – a technique which no doubt assisted his very honest and powerful response. And Bogdan Koca plays an interesting counterpoint as the puzzling neighbour Bill. Bill’s story is equally as complex as Gary’s perhaps, but successfully told in only a few scenes and lines.

Alexandra’s Project will spark many debates. Is Steve a monster, or a child? Is Alexandra mad, or maddened? Is the film expositional, or exploitative? Is the idea substantial, or substantiated, enough to carry a feature film? Those interested in dark visions of the sexual politics of relationships (Lantana comes to mind) will find plenty of food for thought here.

3 flims.