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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Red Road

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#1 of 1 Posted 3/29/07 9:44 PM

From Harveycritic Posts 1637 Last Jan-30
To All [Msg # 22311.1 ]

    RED ROAD

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Tartan Films
Grade: B
Directed by: Andrea Arnold
Written By: Andrea Arnold from characters developed by Lone Scherfig, Anders Thomas Jensen
Cast:   Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Martin Compston, Natalie Press, Andrew Armour
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/29/07
Opens: April 13, 2007

People on the political left (like me in most cases, but not in this particular one) can complain about invasions of privacy, but I think video-camera monitoring on sidewalks is a good idea. In Andrea Arnold’s movie, one soaked with atmosphere and featuring a remarkable film debut by legitimate-stage actress Kate Dickie, a Scottish woman monitoring a rough Glasgow neighborhood hones in a particular fellow whom she had never expected to see again. Having spotted him, she becomes obsessed. This film will remind even casual moviegoers of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” more ambitious ones of Antonioni’s “Blowup,” and the most sophisticated of Lynne Ramsay’s “Morvern Callar”--the last about a Scottish supermarket clerk floating through a booze-swilling youth scene wherein her writer-boyfriend has killed himself and she claims to be the author of his unpublished novel.

The Red Road of the title is a housing project that looks like one that might inhabit any poor neighborhood in the U.S., elevator crammed with graffiti, loud party scenes on weekends, populated in part by ex-cons–in other words, the sort of place that private security firms would be interested in watching closely. Jackie (Kate Dickie) has the job of vetting a slew of TV screens, which in one case allows her to report the stabbing of a 14-year-old girl to the police (too late to have the cops catch the culprits and Jackie, too inattentive to get close-ups of the perps). She gets smiles from her gig as well, as she keeps tabs on a fellow whose ailing bulldog has to be coaxed to move down the street. When a camera focuses on one Clyde (Tony Curran), Jackie can hardly believe her eyes. She stalks him, she follows him to his apartment where she meets his friend Stevie (Martin Compston) and Stevie’s girlfriend April (Natlie Press), and she runs into him in his favorite pub–which results in some down-and-dirty sex. Her motive, though, is not revealed until the conclusion of the story.

“Red Road” requires patience from the audience. We’re kept wondering just motivates this woman. For her, sex is just a way to keep her loneliness at bay, since her weekly shags with a married man in a car is unsatisfactory. Just what does she want with Clyde–who, by the way, is seductive, handsome, and yet menacing, violent, truly scary.

The story, which embraces disaffected youth, a family schism, a lonely woman, and a far-fetched, disappointing payoff, is not the principal selling point of “Red Road.” Its style is its substance. Small, sentimental touches, like the old fella and his sick dog, are affecting. Photographer Robbie Ryan’s colored gels on his hi-def camera add a noirish bent. Suspense is created because of the absence of music, rather than in spite of its want. The daily life of the Scottish working class comes across in microcosm.

“Red Road,” which thankfully has English subtitles to clarify the Scottish dialogue, is the initial production of the Advance Party, a project that will be part of a series by different directors set in Scotland with characters all developed by Lone Scherfig and Anders Thomas Jensen.

Not Rated.    113 minutes   2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Red Road

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