I am not sure how Alexandra’s Project ended up in my queue. It probably ended up in a list of top movies in some category. Alexandra’s Project is an Australian film about a man on his birthday who has a terrific day at work then returns home to an empty, but decorated house. He finds a videotape in the VCR. Apparently his wife has planned a surprise for him, but he probably won’t like it.
Alexandra’s Project is fairly provocative, but the scenario could only exist in the movies. The whole premise falls apart in the light of day. Also Alexandra’s Project feels belabored in its efforts to examine a marriage and tackle gender norms or the battle of the sexes. Alexandra’s Project takes certain arguments to such an extreme that it almost falls over the cliff, but there are nuggets of effectiveness that if the subject matter were more nuanced, it could work. I want a South Korean director to remake it-either it would be taken further and be sumptuous, or it would be realistic and beautiful.
Alexandra’s Project is consciously dark and grimy to reflect the husband’s descent into his own personal hell, which is not inherently a bad choice, but does not make it interesting to watch. I also saw it streaming on Hulu right before it expired, and no subtitles were available. Even though everyone spoke English, they had Australian accents, and I needed subtitles to understand everything. Alexandra’s Project felt too damn long, and I lost interest long before the husband did, which proved to me the old adage that 2s don’t marry 10s, and something was terribly wrong with both of them for the movie to last 103 minutes. Also Alexandra’s Project features full frontal male nudity so if you like that or hate it, I gave you a head’s up (that was an awful pun).
If you are really into Australian films, check it out, but it deals with graphic, explicit subject matter, and there is not enough of a satisfactory pay off for me to say that it was worth my time.
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For those of you who want to know what actually happens in the film, and what I thought of the controversy, keep reading. Alexandra’s Project makes it obvious before the husband goes to work that something is off with the wife, and I immediately thought Alexandra’s Project was going to an Andrea Yates premise where the husband is clueless before tragedy strikes, but no. That concept would have been a solid one. (MINE! Pay me!) When the husband leaves for work, his neighbor talks to him about watering and tending the garden, which I immediately thought of as the marriage, but specifically his wife and a reference to intimate matters. MESSAGE!!! I’ve read Song of Solomon.
When he gets to work, they celebrate his birthday, and if I recall correctly, he gets a promotion. His secretary takes the kids’ photos (he has a son and a daughter) out of his office per the wife’s request so the husband is excited about whatever his wife is planning. When he gets home, the lights are not working, and no photos are there either. He plays the videotape from his wife, and basically she brings up all the issues that he has been ignoring forever, plays mind games by pretending she has breast cancer (he cries), reveals that she has been whoring herself out during the day to get money, including to the pervy garden neighbor, who has sex with her during the video, and is leaving with the kids, whom he will never see again (they appear briefly at the beginning of her videotape). The pervy neighbor is in charge of getting rid of the videotape, but basically shows mercy because the husband reminds him of his own former marital problems, but basically is a co-conspirator and gets rid of the evidence. The final scene is the husband masturbating to his wife having sex in the videotape in the dark.
The crux of the wife’s issues is that her husband loves her body, but does not see her as a human being so she uses her body as revenge by taking it away, gaining financial security because of it and removing the fruits of her body, their children. On one hand, she has a point because of that final scene. Alexandra’s Project fairly makes the point that a woman’s body is not a man’s property and takes it to the prurient extreme that if she wants to have sex with everyone, but you, she can make that choice. Alexandra’s Project is not interested in taking the second step, which usually is embedded in the first one and prevents us from answering that question, is that action beneficial, because we do not do that to men. So I theoretically applaud Alexandra’s Project for forcing its audience to just stick to that one question instead of patronizing women with concern trolling.
On the other hand, we do live in the real world, and my brain is not just theoretical so her plan would not work and becomes problematic when her plan includes the kids. Alexandra’s Project has bought into the societal myth of children as property instead of individuals with needs and wants that occasionally need to be asserted independently from his or her parents. Sometimes parents don’t do what is best for their children, and we should not assume that they do. Parents are flawed individuals who bring their personal and relationship issues to the table, consciously or not, when they make decisions for their children. In the old days, the fathers had complete authority of the children, and now even though both parents can share authority over their children, people, including fathers of children abused by their mothers in rare circumstances, can be heard saying, “Well, children need their mother.”
Alexandra’s Project is reaffirming today’s standards that women have some special claim on children. They don’t, and they shouldn’t. Neither should men. Children are people with autonomous rights and are not another battleground for parents to fight over. Children have a right to a relationship with both their parents. They have a right to have access to their history on both sides of their family tree. Obviously if one parent is abusive, even if a child wants to be with the abusive parent, then the best interests of the child should trump the child’s rights, but Alexandra’s Project makes them a tool of revenge instead of also victims of the wife’s gripes, justified or not, with her husband, and damages its argument in the process. I do not even care how the husband feels about this (apparently indifferent based on the final scene). It is not about him or the wife. Alexandra’s Project is not even a little concerned about the kids after the opening scenes, and that was a missed opportunity. Perhaps Alexandra’s Project should have never involved children in the first place.
Real talk: what do I really think about who is right or wrong in Alexandra’s Project? The husband is not all bad. He is obviously upset at the prospect that his wife may have cancer. He did show emotion when he initially heard that he would not see kids again. With that said, Alexandra does have a point. You don’t insert anything into a person without their permission. He is a rapist. End of story so she has a point that maybe he is more distraught at the loss of his control over her body than actually losing her as a person. The fast forwarding shows what he probably did in real life when she complained, just brushed her off, but honestly I would have too, and I actually think something was wrong with him to watch as much of the videotape as he did and not go to the authorities immediately.
I have no problem with not taking either party’s side. Just because I critiqued him does not mean that I am giving her a pass. She is a controlling nutter projecting her infidelities on him. She needed counseling after who knows how much terror she experienced in the marital bed, and sometimes rape victims engage in more sex to reassert control, but once her actions affected the kids, she lost the high ground and became a perp.
Also I hate movies like Alexandra’s Project and Complete Unknown because ultimately the plan would not work. She got all the kids’ photos. Her kids’ friends or the school photographer does not have photos. Did she make so much money as a sex worker that she was able to move to a country with no extradition treaty with Australia? The whole plan falls apart the minute that the husband gets access to a phone and calls the police. Maybe not immediately, maybe not for months or years, but at some point, even if it is when the kids have had enough of mom’s crap and want to see dad. They won’t be underage forever, and even if they later conclude that their father is complete crap, they will get curious about him. Kids always do.