Red Road. SIFF

The Dark Route Through Female Psyche.
Andrea Arnold's 'Red Road'.

June 21

'Red Road' was one of the two films that I anticipated most for over a year, the other one being 'Inland Empire'. There's some kind of weird symmetry to the fact that I got to see them back to back on the same night.

Arnold's film screened in the main competition at Cannes last year - almost an anomaly for a debut feature - where it garnered exceptional notices and a Grand Prix award. Everyone was talking about a potent new voice on the scene and I could not wait to have a taste of it. What made it even more fascinating was that it is the first film in a series of three that are going to feature the same characters. Each film will be directed by a different filmmaker (the other two will be helmed by two Danish members of the Dogme project)

But anticipation is a double-edge sword, ready to topple down your enthusiasm to the ground. 'Red Road' did not prove to be what I expected to say the least. Not because of any inherent faults. Rather, it was akin to taking a boat to Tahiti for a rowdy holiday and ending up in a cold Edinburgh port instead.

I'm not passing judgement here, Edinburgh is beautiful, but I felt out of sorts with this film, completely understanding its aims but not being able to give a shit anyway.

The central figure in the film is Jackie (Kate Dickie), a single woman in her mid 30s who works as a CCTV monitor operator. Jackie seems detached from the world around her, preferring to live life vicariously in her God-like position up in (literally) air. She does have an occasional passionless encounter with a fellow officer, but something has obviously died within her. That is until she spots a red-haired man (Tony Curran) on one of her screens. Her demeanour changes completely. We learn that the man has committed a crime and Jackie isn't too happy seeing him out of prison. She soon descends from her omnipotent throne into the stinking dump of Glasgow's urban wasteland to take matters into her own hands (again, literally). The film takes its time to get to this point and I sunk in my seat comfortably expecting a bracing thesis on justice from a female point of view. And Arnold, who is an Oscar winning director after all (for a short film), holds the suspense remarkably well, constantly teasing us with her character's seemingly left-off field actions. It's a device that would be best described as "cropping" - giving us only certain information without the necessary caption to make the context clear. It reminds us just how deceiving "information" can be - particularly visual. We think that we can read a situation by just seeing it, but as they say... it's only the tip of the iceberg. For example, in once scene, we see Jackie follow the man, Clay, into a pub. Just before she goes in, she picks up a stone from the footpath and puts it in her handbag. We assume, it's there to protect her. It's obvious and logical, yet the implications of this action turn out to be completely different a few scenes later.

While manipulative and slightly contrived this is an approach that has been used by most of the great suspense masters and it's what I like most about 'Red Road' - the complexity of its narrative construction, the exceptional understanding and mastery of visual language. Yet, like any road, this one must end at a certain destination. In this particular case, where you've been second guessing yourself constantly, the final point begins to grow to an almost unsustainable importance. The audience MUST be surprised at any cost. It's the kind of promise that 99% of films, especially thrillers, fail to deliver. When they do... well... just look at what happened to 'Sixth Sense'.

'Red Road' does deliver a surprise... but one that is so underwhelming that I momentarily found myself completely thrown out of the film, wondering how elaborate the gilded plasterwork in the State Theatre was. It's a beautifully tacky building, constructed in a neo-baroque style, deliberately mixing a myriad of influences in its decor to create a dreamy, magical atmosphere. A perfect movie palace really, where the mystery extends to the corridors even after the film is finished. Built in 1929, the State Theatre...

I'm so sorry... where was I?

The punchline in this film is not, as I might've insinuated, weak. It's simply rather conservative.

I watched a 1960s Mexican horror film recently based on the legend of La Llorana. It featured a woman, a witch to be more precise, bent on gaining "absolute" power and knowledge. Even if it meant sacrificing everyone around her. What is exceptional in this case is the purity of this desire, its blatantly empowering motivation. Something I believe that La Llorana shared with the femme fatales of 1940s. But then they were all evil right?

I only bring this up because I feel that the "good" heroine of 'Red Road' could have made for a fascinating analysis of guilt and gendered notion of power because she is a character that is at once extremely natural and recognizable yet full of contradictions and mystery. Jackie (and Clay for that matter) is not a movie cypher put there by the director to explore some abstract theory (as happens in a lot of French films recently). She presents a rare chance to see a woman who is not only in control, but also takes action. The sex scene that comes at a... uhum... climactic point (just like in Nuri Ceylan's 'Climates'), hints at a truly twisted sensibility behind the ordinariness of this woman's face. Of course, the trick is in the motivations and unfortunately Arnold can't help but trap herself and her heroine in yet another 'woman's picture'... apron strings and all...