...doesn’t play out like your traditional thriller would.
"Red Road" is the first of a planned trilogy for the Advance Party film movement, an offshoot of Dogme 95 which was founded by Danish filmmakers Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. Dogme 95 followed a set of rules that created a back to basics formula for film. Dogme filmmakers Lone Scherfig ("Italian for Beginners") and Anders Thomas Jensen ("Election Night") adapted those same principles for their splinter group, then came up with their own stable of characters. These characters will be featured in each of the three films and handed over to three different first-time feature-film directors. Each filmmaker is to come up with their own separate story involving those characters. All films in the Advance Party trilogy will be shot in Glasgow and are co-produced by the Scottish Sigma Films and Von Trier´s Zentropa. Helmed by Andrea Arnold (who won an Oscar for her short film "Wasp"), "Red Road" kicked off Advance Party on a high note winning the Jury Prize at the 2006 Cannes as well as sweeping the Scottish BAFTAs. Unfortunately, the movement may have stalled as the next two productions by Morag McKinnon and Mikkel Norgaard are currently in limbo.
Jackie (Kate Dickie) works as a closed circuit television operator. She mans a wall of surveillance monitors that overlook the Red Road flats of Glasgow, a neighborhood known for its high-rises and a wave of crime during the 1970´s. Jackie is estranged from her family and obviously hides a great deal of pain. At a wedding reception, she barely speaks to anybody there and only has a few curt words with a relative before quickly departing. Jackie engages in quickie sex with a colleague (and married man) in a surveillance van parked in a field far from prying eyes. This is the closest thing she has to intimate contact with another human being. The only true family Jackie has is the little people she watches on TV. Jackie acts as a shepherd for the neighborhood folks. She likely doesn´t even know their names, but grows concerned for some, such as a lonely, overweight woman in an office building and an elderly man walking his sick bulldog.
Jackie´s quiet, yet distant, little world is shaken to its core when she notices a certain man in one of her monitors. This man is Clyde Henderson (Tony Curran), recently released from prison and now working as a locksmith. Jackie becomes completely obsessed with Clyde. She follows him throughout her monitor bay, zooming in and following his every step. She´s so intent on watching Clyde that she completely misses a near-fatal stabbing of a young woman. Soon, Jackie begins stalking him on the street. She follows him into a café, then tracks down the apartment where he´s staying. Jackie worms her way into the lives of Clyde and his roommate/cellmate Stevie (Martin Compston) and Stevie´s girlfriend April (Nathalie Press). She crashes a party they´re throwing and comes face-to-face with the object of her fixation. Clyde knows he´s seen Jackie before somewhere, but can´t place her. They engage in a tumultuous relationship that culminates in a love scene that is graphic and anything, but tender. The next morning Jackie calls the police and frames Clyde for a sexual assault. It doesn´t take her long to recant and it is only when confronted by Clyde that she reveals exactly what their hidden connection is.
Average user rating (1-5):
Not yet rated.
Not yet rated.