A New York film director’s fascination with watching life through domestic surveillance equipment finally catches up with him when he discovers the young Russian he’s taken in as a lodger is fleeing from a date rape gang operating on the net.

SYNOPSIS:

Film director FRANCIS CAGE has a dark secret: now divorced, he secretly videos his matrimonial home in the hope of keeping an eye on his young daughter, whose brother drowned in their swimming pool when his mom, BELINDA, fell asleep by the pool, incapacitated by alcohol and meds.

Then one day he discovers Belinda is having an affair with their nanny. His world is falling apart!

After a shoot working with Francis, Russian model Anastasia returns home a day early to find her fiancé, bar owner and small time dealer, PAUL, having sex with another woman in their bed.She wants to leave, but Paul is her chance to getting citizenship and she lets him talk her round.

A couple days later Anastasia wakes in her bed convinced she’s been date raped. Suspecting Paul is behind it, she calls friends who are too busy and finally Francis who offers her his spare room.

One afternoon while Francis is out with his daughter, Belinda comes across the surveillance gear Francis has hidden away in their garden studio. She flies into a rage and verbally attacks Francis when he arrives with their daughter after his day out.

Though shamed, Francis can’t help reminding her of what happened to their son the last time she indulged her selfish, emotional needs. Fiona needs someone to watch over her – and her mom sure isn’t doing that!

As if obsessed with protecting the vulnerable, Francis places secret cameras in Anastasia’s room. When he plays back a video that shows Paul coming to the apartment and threatening Anastasia, he decides to intervene and first listens in on Paul’s phone conversations, then cleverly finds a way of spying on the porno gang, setting up hidden cameras in the studio where they are going to shoot their next rape video.

Anastasia receives a package from Belinda, which strongly suggests Francis has been spying on her too. When she finds one of the secret cameras in her room, she’s mad at Francis and threatens to leave. But when he tells her the story of what happened to his son and hears ofthe progress he’s been making tracking down the people who raped her, she agrees to go on a stake-out with him.

Francis and Anastasia park outside the photography studio in a grubby area of town, believing they will soon catch the gang red-handed. But nothing’s happening. They begin to despair. Until one night they see a rape in progress…

When the feed breaks up, Anastasia loses patience with the entire operation and storms the studio with a gun she steals from Francis. One of the gang is shot but the rest get away. Returning home, Francis discovers that the video feed must have returned after Anastasia rushed from the van. They have evidence.

Seconds after Francis leaves the apartment, Paul tricks his way inside to confront Anastasia. As he’s leaving the building, Francis comes across a match box branded with the name of Paul’s bar; he doubles back… slips into the apartment, and surprises Paul. But then Paul gets the upper hand, only to be stabbed by Anastasia just in time.

Meantime, Belinda has finally cleaned up her act and returned to painting. Months later and now pregnant, Anastasia joins Francis at Belinda’s new exhibition – a series of paintings inspired by the video images Francis captured of her with his secret cameras.

THEMES

The story looks at the way we view being watched and watched over – the voyeur v. the guardian angel. When is watching someone the greater good?

Francis’s irony is bitter in the extreme: a supreme watcher (a film director) fails to be there, watching his son when he is in the pool… fails to be watching over his wife, who has begun drinking and losing herself to prescription meds.

Anastasia makes a living from being looked at. In her desperation to find a new home in the USA she finds herself become the plaything of men who see her as nothing but a commodity in a video.

In the end it is Francis’s watchfulness that enables him to save Anastasia’s life and put an end to the villains’ dirty work.

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