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Jackie is a CCTV operator. One day, a man shows his face on her monitor, a man she hoped never to see again. Now she has no choice and is compelled to confront him.
First of all, I am not tagging this for spoilers because I'd rather you read this and not see this movie than avoid reading this because you don't want to be spoiled: fuck this movie. Fuck any movie that uses a false rape allegation as a plot point. The over-prevalence of these stories in media feeds the continual victim-blaming, slut-shaming patriarchal rape denialism that lets most rapists go free. I'm not saying you're gonna watch this and suddenly decide to stop believing rape survivors or go sit a jury and say "oh he's such a nice boy." I'm not talking about you; I'm talking about what happens when you then go promote this…
In less assured hands, Red Road could easily have been a shamelessly manipulative and grotty little potboiler.
Those hands would not have needed to have been that much less assured than Andrea Arnold's either. This stunning mystery drama, set around the titular (now former) high-rise estate in one of the poorest areas in Glasgow, could so easily on so many occasions go off the rails and become something that would have been considerably less rewarding and considerably more depressing.
Guided by a startling and starkly realistic lead performance from Kate Dickie, this is a film that starts out as a surveillance video suspense thriller before becoming a very affecting domestic drama film. It plays its hand absolutely expertly as well…
100 Female Directors Challenge 29/100 prompt 7: Andrea Arnold
A quiet revenge story, about the irrational things people can do when they are unable/don’t know how to let go of pain & loss.
The writing for this film is really good! In the first scene there is no dialogue, & things unfold as the main character Jackie goes about her workday. She’s obviously isolated in her own world, & keeps other people at arms length. The way the film shows this quality is profound. It made me actually feel the ache of her aloneness.
Jackie’s backstory isn’t revealed until the ending scenes, so the viewer is left wondering why she’s making some very strange & often dangerous decisions along the way. When it’s finally…
“i heard you came looking for me.” “i did.” “that’s nice, because i’ve been thinking about you.”
what we’re willing to do in order to get the answers we need — Andrea Arnold’s Red Road makes for a fascinating feature-length debut, a film about our impulsive need to find the truth, even with the risk of being in grave danger — where nothing will stop you from finding out.
our leading lady, Jackie (Kate Dickie) takes advantage of her position as a CCTV operator to stalk, follow, and capture Clyde (Tony Curran), a man from her past. every move he makes is under her watchful gaze, every physical activity he does is seen through her eyes.
Andrea Arnold’s debut is a palpably unsettling, provocative chamber piece, one interested in using the base elements of a thriller and reconfiguring them into something much more unconventional.
The filmmaker is skilful in pushing on the limits of identification, placing us with Jackie (Kate Dickie) as her almost voyeuristic obsession starts to take hold. The story does an excellent job of probing this troubled mind, Arnold matching that state with her brilliantly inventive style—a mix of social realism and poetic hyperstylation, putting us into Jackie’s headspace as we’re thrown into the middle of this situation.
It’s the sort of film that really gets under your skin, keeping us in the dark for most of the runtime so that we share…
A fascinating exploration on grief, and how it can weigh on us. Kate Dickie and Tony Curran both give memorable and authentic performances. Recommend this highly!
I must say that I was not entirely convinced or with the best dispositions on my part to see director Andrea Arnold's debut, in the end, I have done so for two simple reasons:
1. because a dear friend from Argentina recommended it in a Discord group. 2. I wanted to get rid of the bitter taste I had from having seen Fish Tank last year.
In this author's work we meet Jackie, a girl who lives alone, works at the Glasgow City Hall. Her job is to watch the images from the surveillance cameras strategically distributed around the city for security reasons. One day, she gets a big surprise when she sees on one of the monitors a man…
Much like the voyeur experience, "Red Road" marks a distressfully invading yet severely irresistible debut from Andrea Arnold, one that brilliantly involves the viewer in the landscape and provides very sparse details, relying only upon what meets the eye and assumption until the disquieting reveal.
Voyeuring the voyeur within the Dogme 95 metrics only adds to the sense of realism and grounds the suspense and some of the more implausible aspects.
Solid civic surveillance thriller that takes full advantage of the Danish connection.
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