Beyond the Multiplex

A powerful mystery-thriller -- and major festival hit -- about sex, violence, revenge and guilt. Plus: Douglas Coupland puts Gen-X angst on the big screen.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Film Festivals, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Independent Film, Reviews, Beyond the Multiplex

Jackie (Kate Dickie) in "Red Road"

April 12, 2007 | In the obnoxious but charming little corner of the entertainment industry where I spend my professional life these days -- where, if you're not careful, you find yourself air-kissing someone and saying "See you at Cannes!" and meaning it -- there are a half-dozen or so movies every year that become scandalous or sensational or controversial without anybody actually seeing them. Or to put it another way, "everybody" sees them, meaning everybody in the semi-insider clique of a few thousand hollow-eyed people who attend film festivals compulsively, read cinephile blogs (what are your favorites?) and check the mailbox wistfully for the new issues of Sight & Sound and Film Comment.

There's a business trend story to discuss here, which is partly about the fact that film festivals are booming, even as the distribution market for small, ambitious independent cinema becomes increasingly difficult. Movies like "Battle in Heaven" and "Bamako" and "Los Muertos" and "Into Great Silence" (just to pick a few examples I've covered in the past year) could be described as hits on a certain level. They've packed festival screenings and sparked impassioned discussion and moved people to go out and read things and write things and make their own movies in response, all of which is pretty much the point of the whole exercise. But the cumulative total audience of all those films put together is basically zero, at least when you compare it, say, to the 3 million or so people who bought tickets for "Blades of Glory" last weekend. (Three effing million! Jesus H. Christ!)

But I do not come here today to debate the ever-so-interesting nuances of the filmgoing marketplace, nor to berate the masses for their execrable taste. (I'm sure "Blades of Glory" is the finest figure-skating comedy since, well, that other one.) Nay, my sermon this Thursday concerns "Red Road," a kick-ass, creepy, sexy mystery-thriller from Scotland that gets under your skin and wiggles around like a parasite. It's one of the movie-buff events of the year, or it ought to be. But it's in danger of becoming another festival hit, another well-respected movie that geeks like me (and possibly you, since you're reading this) talk about in terms of veneration but that hardly anybody actually sees. This must not be allowed to happen!

I've seen this before and I know the signs. "Red Road," which is the debut feature from British director Andrea Arnold, won the Jury Prize last spring at Cannes. (Basically, that's the third-place award, but it sure sounds good, doesn't it?) Then it played Toronto in the fall, where people loved it or hated it as the case may be -- it's a film that provokes a powerful emotional and visceral response -- and Sundance in the winter, where people loved and hated it some more. It played at film festivals in Helsinki and Cleveland and Bucharest and Santa Barbara, Calif., and I have no doubt that audiences in those places spilled out of the theaters talking about it.

So those people got to see it, and now Tartan Films (a plucky little art-film distributor I greatly admire) will play it for a few weeks in a few big cities, and pretty soon you'll be able to rent it from GreenCine and Netflix. That's how it works these days; I get that. But this one, folks, is some powerful cinema. You should see it on a big screen with other breathing humans in the room if you possibly can. "Red Road" is a genre movie that doesn't cheat you with cardboard characters and ludicrous coincidences. Its themes include sex, violence, revenge and guilt, but its settings and its people and its darkness and (finally) even its hopefulness come from the real world of human behavior.

As I wrote when I covered the film at Sundance, "Red Road" is anchored by an amazing performance from Scottish actress Kate Dickie, who plays Jackie, a single woman of 35 or so whose every word, every gesture, every mannerism conveys that there's something big she's holding back. Jackie works at a police surveillance post in Glasgow, monitoring the closed-circuit cameras that scan the city's notorious housing projects day and night. Arnold's script makes no explicit commentary on the 24-hour security state of contemporary urban Britain, but the film's pervasive mood of gloom and paranoia speaks volumes. (View and learn, aspiring politically minded screenwriters!)

One day while she's watching over the poor, depressed and marginally criminal from her panopticon viewing station, Jackie catches a glimpse of a redheaded guy (Tony Curran) hanging around Red Road, one of the most infamous Glaswegian housing blocks. He's not really doing anything, or at least anything unusual: He frequents hookers, smokes cigarettes in horrible little tea shops, drives around in a hand-painted locksmith's van trying to drum up some business, legal or otherwise. Is he who she thinks he is?

He is -- but we don't really know what that means, because stoic, lockjawed Jackie's giving nothing away. The guy's name is Clyde, and he's a lifelong Glasgow no-account who was recently paroled from prison. Clearly there's some history between him and Jackie, some history bad enough that she starts virtually (and then actually) stalking him, to the point of abdicating her actual duties. You may or may not guess what the back story is with Clyde and Jackie, but "Red Road" is only partly a detective story with its secrets buried in the past. Its real secret lies in the present, in the way that our lonely, vulnerable and -- let's just say this -- outrageously horny heroine gets drawn in by this dude, who may or may not have turned over a new leaf but is undeniably a charismatic bad boy with a twinkle in his eye.

There must be other neo-noir films with female protagonists; like the classic detective-movie hero, Jackie is a hard-boiled character damaged by the past, whose pursuit of a cold case leads her to fall in love (or at least in sweaty, animal lust) with the wrong person. But I can't think of any, just offhand. Arnold's gotten in trouble with some viewers for her presentation of female sexuality -- Jackie does something she shouldn't and then compounds it by doing something much worse -- but I think it's a mistake to view this film's potent erotic charge through that prism. Sex is a dangerous and powerful force, whether you're a man or a woman, gay or straight. It speaks a kind of crude, bodily truth, and sometimes (even often) takes us into dark places we're not sure we want to visit.

"Red Road" is a thriller that doesn't sacrifice the essential mysteries of its characters and grim, post-1984 setting to the conveniences of plot. Yes, the back story of Jackie and Clyde is revealed and dealt with, far more satisfactorily than in most thrillers. But the real story for these two characters, and for the extraordinary young director Andrea Arnold, is what lies ahead.

"Red Road" opens April 13 in New York and Los Angeles. Other cities, and DVD release, will follow.

Next page: More wistful post-Gen-X romantic comedy