The female co-director of John Jarratt's StalkHer insists the film, about a battle of wills between a stalker and his target, has been given the thumbs-up from the very people who might be most inclined to condemn it.
"We've had some fabulous emails from women who have been victims of domestic violence," says Kaarin Fairfax, who stars in the two-hander alongside Jarratt. "They loved it. One woman said, 'I just wanted to tell you that being able to sit and watch this film, as much as it challenged me, was incredibly cathartic. I haven't had such a good laugh in many, many years.'"
As well as co-directing, Jarratt stars in StalkHer as Jack, a misogynist who works in the pharmacy of a hospital where Emily (Fairfax) is a nurse. One night, he breaks into her house carrying a tool bag stuffed with hacksaw, scalpel and various other instruments of intended torture (it's pretty obvious he hasn't popped around to help with the renovations, and a pretty obvious reference to Jarratt's most famous role, as serial killer Mick Taylor in the Wolf Creek films).
But before Jack can do his worst, Emily tasers him. He wakes to find himself bound to a chair, drugged, and beaten by his intended victim, who eventually makes it clear that she welcomed – even set up – his invasion.
When I visited the Gold Coast set of the film in January 2014 (it was being shot, with a tiny crew and on a budget of $1.2 million, on a single soundstage next door to the $60 million multi-studio extravaganza that was Angelina Jolie's Unbroken), screenwriter Kristijana Maric described the film this way: "It's a love story, it's a courtship story. It touches on man-versus-woman in a kind of undercurrent way, but it puts a whole lot of titillation on top. It tries to be entertaining and to be real, and it exposes men and women as both being maniacal."
Maric told me she studied criminology at university, as a defensive strategy against a world she didn't quite understand.
"I was very naive as a kid, going 'Why do people do bad things?', and I wanted to feel guarded," she told me. "So I was arming myself, being strategic, in studying criminology, so I could pull apart people so I wouldn't be surprised. I didn't know how to handle it when people were mean – which is quite weird when you read the script."
On the promotional circuit – which has encompassed three weeks of media interviews, Q&A screenings in the cities and regions, and post-screening karaoke sessions with fans – Jarratt and Fairfax have been at pains to sell it as a good old-fashioned battle-of-the-sexes romp. They have referenced The War of the Roses, Misery, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And they have railed against an atmosphere of political correctness that makes it increasingly difficult to tell stories that don't conform to approved narratives about how we ought to behave.
I have some sympathy with that view, and with Jarratt and Fairfax wanting to try something that pushes the boundaries. But this film isn't the answer.
It's not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with a story about shifting power dynamics – that's a fertile ground well worth revisiting – but there is nothing in the characters, the situation or the dialogue that you can readily believe in.
If it's meant to work at a more allegorical level, well, so be it. But what does that allegory tell us? Put simply: that women are asking for it.
The key moment in the film comes near the end. (Spoiler alert: if you think this film is for you, you might want to stop reading now. Then again, maybe you should know what you're in for.)
Jarratt's Jack has got loose and he has Fairfax's Emily up against a wall, his hand around her throat. Then he has her pinned to a table, and she says to him, "If you really loved me, you'd do it." And so he does it.
Coupled with the revelation that Emily has willed Jack's home invasion in order to gratify her own desires, the scene casts an enormous question mark over the idea of her as a victim, for the purpose of a supposedly "edgy" or "funny" twist. But if this is allegory, it also casts that question mark over the whole notion of victimhood in stalking-cum-domestic violence situations.
Think that's taking things too far? Well, maybe. But consider this. Researchers from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health recently published the findings of a survey of attitudes to stalking that found many people believed "stalking isn't serious", "stalking is romantic" and "victims are to blame".
Police differed from the general public only in thinking stalking was a serious matter. Males were more likely than females to express these views.
Is there a risk that StalkHer adds to the confusion around such issues? I think so.
Fairfax, though, disagrees. "I think men have to use their brains and negotiate with their partners about what's appropriate," she says. "If they think going to see StalkHer allows them to go and choke their wives, I don't necessarily think that's our fault."
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