Reviewed by Lindsay Mackie
Stars Tom Long, Greta Scacchi, Colin Friels, Anna Torv, Zoe Coyle, Deborah Mailman,
Odette Joannidis | Written by Ana Kokkinos & Andrew Bovell, based on the novel by Rupert Thomson
UK certification 18 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 113 minutes | Directed by Ana Kokkinos
The film opens in a dance studio with Scacchi as a distinguished choreographer overseeing the final rehearsal of a flamboyant, erotic ballet. Principal dancers Daniel and Bridget (Long and Torv) are also partners and during a break Bridget asks Daniel to go and get her a packet of cigarettes. He goes out in the Melbourne sun and disappears.
For 12 days, until he is dumped on wasteland — hooded, traumatised but alive — no one knows what has happened to Daniel. When he returns, they still don’t know because he doesn’t discuss it with anyone. We know, because we see it in fairly explicit detail. He has been abducted by three women who are hooded throughout the time they abuse him sexually. Daniel spends 12 days chained and frantic in a warehouse by the docks (from the ambient sounds) undergoing the shame and, the film indicates, the reluctant sexual charge of non-consensual sex.
The film benefits from the shockingness of the premise — man raped by women. The hooded women — quite a tricky garb one way or another and a dress code that definitely carries with it the danger of risibility — are (are not?) like male rapists, perpetrating violence because they can. Is male reaction the same as a woman’s? The film looks at how it might be different, how male victims might suffer more from shame because of the male body’s involuntary participation. In the aftermath it looks at how a maddened sexual chase through numberless women is one way of dealing with the violation.
But this is also meant to be the search by Daniel for the three criminals and as thriller it doesn’t really work. The introduction of the policeman ex-husband (Friels) of Scacchi’s character — to get to an explanation of Daniel’s disappearance and subsequent drastic abandonment of dance and his former life — should introduce some explanation about the three weird women, but nothing is offered up about them at all. It’s a big gap. The other lack is the character of Daniel. Long is a great dancer, but his Daniel never quite springs to life as vividly as he does into dance. More revelation would have made this a better film.
EXTRAS ** An interview with the cast adn crew, plus three "mini clips" of some of the scenes being shot.