This is a poorly constructed and unimaginative film that rests all its hopes in the misguided belief that shock value equals artistic merit… because they must have known that they aren’t going to please the general populace with this depressing examination of gender relations, so they have to hope that the experimental crowd will embrace their half-baked social critique and half-cooked plotline as bracing honesty and low-budget inventiveness.
A few brief examples to highlight the plodding boredom of having to watch this:
-A tense and foreboding musical score plays at the opening of the film, as a camera moves along the winding roads of a sleepy suburban development. Surely nothing bad can happen here in peaceful suburbia, right? But wait, that tense musical score seems to suggest otherwise… perhaps something horrible is about to be revealed. The dichotomy is so tension producing and edgy!
-We are introduced to a typical husband, wife, and two children. A critical plot point is introduced when we learn that the house is protected by a unique (and unlikely) house safety system developed by the next door neighbor (how convenient!) that actually physically encases the access points of the house in metal slats that can be closed and locked, making it a super-safe dwelling… or a trap! Just like suburbia!
-The convenient next door neighbor is mentioned, and shown, as always watering his plants. Just standing out there in the yard, hose in hand, watering the plants. The phallic foreshadowing of this act is missed only by people who are not actually watching this pedantic little Australian film.
-The film then settles into its main concept, which is that the husband returns from work on his birthday to find himself alone in the house with instructions to watch a video. He puts it on, and sees his wife and kids saying “Happy Birthday”, and then the kids are sent away and the wife proceeds to act completely bat-shit crazy. But he has to stay and watch, because he is locked (surprise!) inside his own house!
-And the man who has helped the wife to trap her husband, and is filming the video, and who will also be fucking the wife on camera is (surprise!) the next door neighbor!
-She develops her videotape soliloquy from strip tease to blunt revelations to manipulative lies to crazed revenge ideas that include leaving him and hiding the children from him, all culminating in her final admission that she is actually funding her escape/revenge plan with money she earned as a prostitute. And to prove it, we get to watch her fuck the convenient next door neighbor. That’s right… even suburban women can turn tricks! Right there in their suburban homes! But only if they are truly liberated from all societal ethics (and therefore are allowed to engage in “self-affirming” prostitution and “justifiable” kidnapping) by the experience of having a stupid and inattentive husband… you go girl!
Seriously… the damage that couples can inflict upon each other can be enormously disheartening and soul crushing… we all know this to be true. But does that allow for this sort of response? Her critiques of him (some of which, I will admit, are interesting in their blunt accuracy) can in many ways be boiled down to the basic theme that he did not adequately communicate with her… but is this one-sided video harangue that ends with her vanishing and taking their kids with her (remember, this is edgy art cinema, so the husband doesn’t find his crazy wife and lovely children and affect some sort of reconciliation and reunion… rather, he is left entombed in his fortress house forever watching a short video clip of the family he lost) an attempt at communication? Of course not! This is not the precursor to discourse, this is merely one angry woman becoming a vigilante hell-bent on protecting the justice of her own life. I’m all for the disenfranchised and the down-trodden finding their voice and speaking up… but after you speak up and ask the tough questions you also need to find the strength to be there to hear the answers, otherwise you are no different than those that injured you. In political terms; the revolutionary starts to become the very thing the revolution hoped to bring to an end.
But this is all much more than this movie deserved. If you haven’t seen it yet… skip it. Or if you are one of those that hold true to the RAW ethic of only reading after watching… well then, you and I should lament together that we can never get those 103 minutes back.
A few brief examples to highlight the plodding boredom of having to watch this:
-A tense and foreboding musical score plays at the opening of the film, as a camera moves along the winding roads of a sleepy suburban development. Surely nothing bad can happen here in peaceful suburbia, right? But wait, that tense musical score seems to suggest otherwise… perhaps something horrible is about to be revealed. The dichotomy is so tension producing and edgy!
-We are introduced to a typical husband, wife, and two children. A critical plot point is introduced when we learn that the house is protected by a unique (and unlikely) house safety system developed by the next door neighbor (how convenient!) that actually physically encases the access points of the house in metal slats that can be closed and locked, making it a super-safe dwelling… or a trap! Just like suburbia!
-The convenient next door neighbor is mentioned, and shown, as always watering his plants. Just standing out there in the yard, hose in hand, watering the plants. The phallic foreshadowing of this act is missed only by people who are not actually watching this pedantic little Australian film.
-The film then settles into its main concept, which is that the husband returns from work on his birthday to find himself alone in the house with instructions to watch a video. He puts it on, and sees his wife and kids saying “Happy Birthday”, and then the kids are sent away and the wife proceeds to act completely bat-shit crazy. But he has to stay and watch, because he is locked (surprise!) inside his own house!
-And the man who has helped the wife to trap her husband, and is filming the video, and who will also be fucking the wife on camera is (surprise!) the next door neighbor!
-She develops her videotape soliloquy from strip tease to blunt revelations to manipulative lies to crazed revenge ideas that include leaving him and hiding the children from him, all culminating in her final admission that she is actually funding her escape/revenge plan with money she earned as a prostitute. And to prove it, we get to watch her fuck the convenient next door neighbor. That’s right… even suburban women can turn tricks! Right there in their suburban homes! But only if they are truly liberated from all societal ethics (and therefore are allowed to engage in “self-affirming” prostitution and “justifiable” kidnapping) by the experience of having a stupid and inattentive husband… you go girl!
Seriously… the damage that couples can inflict upon each other can be enormously disheartening and soul crushing… we all know this to be true. But does that allow for this sort of response? Her critiques of him (some of which, I will admit, are interesting in their blunt accuracy) can in many ways be boiled down to the basic theme that he did not adequately communicate with her… but is this one-sided video harangue that ends with her vanishing and taking their kids with her (remember, this is edgy art cinema, so the husband doesn’t find his crazy wife and lovely children and affect some sort of reconciliation and reunion… rather, he is left entombed in his fortress house forever watching a short video clip of the family he lost) an attempt at communication? Of course not! This is not the precursor to discourse, this is merely one angry woman becoming a vigilante hell-bent on protecting the justice of her own life. I’m all for the disenfranchised and the down-trodden finding their voice and speaking up… but after you speak up and ask the tough questions you also need to find the strength to be there to hear the answers, otherwise you are no different than those that injured you. In political terms; the revolutionary starts to become the very thing the revolution hoped to bring to an end.
But this is all much more than this movie deserved. If you haven’t seen it yet… skip it. Or if you are one of those that hold true to the RAW ethic of only reading after watching… well then, you and I should lament together that we can never get those 103 minutes back.
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