Twenty minutes into Andrea Arnold’s feature film debut, Jackie, a CCTV operator in Glasgow, focuses one of her cameras on a man and woman having sex in a grassy, graffiti-laced lot. When they finish, he turns his face and she recognizes him. She tries to follow the man as he walks away, but her attention drifts to the woman, and soon he has disappeared. She moves the camera to the left, to an empty road. There is silence, stillness, before a fox emerges from the tall grass and scampers away.
Though undoubtedly better than most modern thrillersÑbecause the director is a woman? because she’s a newcomer? because she wrote the film herself?ÑRed Road is nevertheless agonizingly slow; the build-up of suspense is offset by a tiring, empty, dialogue-scarce pacing that has Jackie moving outside her realm of comfort and safety. She wants to confront the man she sees, the person who years ago destroyed her family, and her mode of vengeance seems unthinkable.
Then again, in her mind, it also seems necessary. Her small corner of Glasgow, which she watches over tirelessly, has become a surrogate child of sorts. She has no social life, no close family to speak of; invited to the wedding of her sister-in-law, she stands rigid, a drink in her hand, and can only make occasional small-talk with others. Her job offers her the chance to save people, to do what she never did for her own husband and daughter. And this man has interrupted her world for the second time.
by Adam Balz | Source: Tartan DVD
12 Sep 2007 9:50 AM | Submit Comment
