Alexandra's Project is an Australian thriller film, distributed by Tartan Films in 2003, written and directed by Rolf de Heer. It stars Gary Sweet as Steve and Helen Buday as Alexandra.
The film opens with Steve's birthday celebration at his workplace. After a long day at work, Steve comes home to an eerily silent house and finds that his birthday cake is missing, and all of his family photographs have been replaced with blank sheets of paper. When he finds a videotape, he plays it, and it begins to reveal Alexandra's plan of revenge. In the recording, his wife Alexandra explains that she has been planning this for months, and she intends to torture him emotionally and psychologically for the way he has treated her.
As the video progresses, Steve watches in horror as Alexandra appears on camera accusing him of neglecting their relationship, his family, and prioritizing work over them. Slowly, her words turn to threats and elaborate revenge schemes against Steve. Compelled by a sense of curiosity and narcissism, Steve becomes more and more entrenched in Alexandra's plan, as he desperately tries to figure out where his family has gone and why his life has been upended in this way.
As the movie progresses, we see several flashback scenes, which illustrate some of the issues that have arisen in Steve and Alexandra's marriage. Alexandra begins to describe the cruel and unusual things she has done to Steve since she left him, including preventing him from leaving the house, manipulating how he perceives time, and simulating sex acts while he sleeps.
In the end, everything Alexandra has done – the videotapes, the disappearance of his family, the intrusion and manipulation of his life – become part of her deeply emotional and meticulously planned performance. As Alexandra pushes him to the brink of his own sanity, Steve begins to realize the depth of his losses and the flaws in his own character.
Steve is often seen as an unsympathetic character for his negligence towards his wife and family. However, at the end of the film, he is both devastated by the loss of his family and the realization of his own shortcomings. The ultimate fate of Steve and Alexandra is left to the viewer's imagination.
