Red Road

Synopsis: Jackie (Kate Dickie) works as a CCTV operator overseeing the Red Road housing estate in Glasgow. One day she sees a man on her monitor who she recognizes from her past and is compelled to track him down and confront him.

Andrea Arnold won an Oscar in 2005 for her short film Wasp and her debut feature certainly confirms the Academy’s talent spotting. Red Road was made as part of a project called The Advance Party, in which the director and two other filmmakers were given a list of character descriptions on which to base their films (using the same characters but in different stories). The publicity for the film compares it to the work of Michael Haneke but Arnold is not really concerned with questions of identity and representation and does not have Haneke’s intellectual detachment. She is more concerned with the very tangible problem of how one copes with profound grief.

Part of the skill of the film is that this concern is not apparent until quite late in proceedings, thus giving the emotional devastation that silently underlies the narrative great impact but also embedding it in the reality of day-to-day life, which is very much the director’s point. For much of the film this means watching Jackie watch other people, a literal manifestation of her psychological condition, and feeling with her as she becomes closer to her quarry, a charming ruffian named Clyde (Tony Curran). In this respect the film has points of comparison with the 2007 Academy Award winner, The Lives Of Others, although this is a harder-hitting film. As an audience we do not know why she is so preoccupied with Clyde and Arnold deftly keeps an ambiguous tone to what we and Jackie see, regularly bringing us the brink of some confirmatory event then backing off as it turns out to be nothing at all. But slowly the emphasis shifts from observation to action as Jackie closes in and the motive of her pursuit is revealed. Part thriller and part sociological observation Red Road is very effective in these respects but it is the final revelation that brings everything into focus and gives the film its resonance.

In the lead Kate Dickie, a Scottish television and theatre actress making her feature debut, is outstanding, and deservedly won Best Actress for her performance at the British Independent Film Awards (beating out Helen Mirren, among others) as well as a BAFTA Scotland Award, whilst the film itself won the 2006 Cannes Grand Jury Prize. Skilfully economical and unapologetically intense, Red Road is a hard-hitting drama that takes it place in the fine lineage of British realist cinema.

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