Wow, that woman must have been really pissed!
Alexandra’s Project (2003)
Directed By: Rolf de Heer
The Prologue
If you’ve ever thought that you had issues with women, look right at the film, Alexandra’s Project. One can’t help but ponder after seeing it just what the mind state of director, Rolf de Heer, was when writing the script for this one. It’s an odd take on a woman’s rage and revenge. So odd that some women actually take offense to it. Not only that, but some women turned the role down. I never knew this movie existed until last week when a friend of mine saw it and wouldn’t stop bugging me until I watched it. After seeing it, I will at least say it’s somewhat interesting. Odd, a bit boring, and slow. But KINDA interesting.
The Movie
Steve is a man who has it all, a successful career, wonderful children, beautiful home and a loving wife. However, returning to his home after work on his birthday, he finds his house deserted and darkened with almost all the lightbulbs missing, all easy access outside cut off and a videotape waiting for him. Playing that tape, he watches a bizarre and grueling recording in which his wife explains her grievance with him, her reasons for disappearing with the children and her revenge for how he treated her in a way he would never forget.
If you’re not really sure what’s coming when you start watching this, it can hold your attention. After all, you notice that Alexandra is up to something, something that probably won’t bid well for, Steve. But you just can’t seem to figure out just what it’s going to be. So there is at least some well acted tension at the start. It’s a slow moving tension, but I will go more in depth on that slowness here in a moment. At least out the gate, you could say that, Alexandra’s Project, starts off pretty darn well.
Now once we actually see where it’s all going we get the dragging portion of the film that then takes us on into the also dragging end. The hand’s played early (and it has to be),but after that to spite a few shocks and turns here and there, it’s not as awesome as one might lead you to believe it is. I think it’s got a lot to do with the slow pace of the film. It at first draws you in but when the pace doesn’t raise up with the tension, it kinda falters the movie a bit and it sorta just limps the rest of the way home. If they had done that in a quicker fashion it would have helped things a lot.
Now I can’t really get into details here without spoiling anything, so I’ll just kinda skim over some things here. One giant thing that bugs me about this film is the lack of logic it has. A lot of stuff just doesn’t add up and the big trick and evil plan of Alexandra just doesn’t seem like anything that would fly in any court of law or even work to the nature it seems to here in this movie. So while it is different and well acted, there’s just too much here that doesn’t make a lick of sense for me to really give it any giant level of praise.
The Conclusion
I fail to see what my friend found soo great about this movie that he had to bug me for a week straight about watching it. I didn’t think it was terrible, but it’s far from mind blowing. If you like slow moving thrillers I suppose you could get a kick out of it. But forget about any real logic or reason being behind what you see.
The Rating (6.5/10)
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