Red Road

Andrea Arnold, who made the fine Fish Tank, earlier made this gritty crime drama, named after a high-rise apartment building in Glasgow called Red Road. It is around here that the film was shot, in Dogme 95 style, with natural light and hand-held cameras.

Kate Dickie stars as a police employee working a bank of street cameras. Seated at her desk, she looks into about thirty TV screens, on the eye out for crime or citizens in distress. Mostly she notices small things which make her smile, like a man walking a very old dog. In some ways, it combines Rear Window with the more invasive feelings suggested by Orwell in 1984.

One day Dickie spies on a couple having sex up against a wall. She notices the man's face, and identifies him as a criminal whom she thought was in jail. Little by little we will learn that Dickie was married, but her husband and child died. It doesn't take a genius to figure that this man (Tony Curran), had something to do with their deaths.

Dickie begins following him, even going into his apartment during a party. She allows herself to be seduced by him, and we start to wonder what his plan. She has sex with him (a very graphic and very hot scene), and then we see what she's up to, but she realizes, almost as quickly as we do, that this plan won't work, and she needs to let go.

Red Road is a good film, well acted and with lovely suspense. As with the British films of this style, it is also bleak and dingy--the neighborhood surrounding Red Road is one of poverty and despair. But there unintended moments of exhilaration. The apartment building, which at the time of its construction was the tallest residential building in Europe, has spectacular views. While visiting, Dickie is treated to the wind that blows in while the windows are opened, which give the effect of soaring above the ground.