Stateside releases of foreign films often encounter the marketing challenge of genre classification. Attempting to fit the international film scene in to the set of familiar genres around which most United States releases are structured, is often a game of approximation at best. Such is the case for Red Road, the recent Scottish release directed by Andrea Arnold, and the first installation of The Advance Party trilogy project produced by Lars von Trier.
For want of a better fit, this film was marketed as a thriller, which confuses audiences and sparks dispute among critics, because throughout, the film is painstakingly slow and emotionally muddy, a far cry from the Hitchcock-esque arc we have been taught to expect. Essentially a point-of-view film from beginning to end, Red Road is a unique piece of deeply personal and engrossing storytelling, and while the building tension is not of the white-knuckled, nail-biting variety, you'll still be on the edge of your seat.
Jackie (Kate Dickie), a security camera operator in the rough and underprivileged Red Road district, is our understated heroine, perched every day behind a wall of monitors through which she scrolls intently. Early on it's hinted that Jackie has suffered a great loss, and the juxtaposition of her face, stern and wide-eyed, against the pixilated fragments of others' lives is a telling symbol for her isolation. Still, Jackie is not without compassion for those she watches, and seems most alive while engaged in this professional voyeurism.
However, one day she sees a man on the screen that she recognizes, one who we come to understand was somehow involved in her unspoken tragedy. Thus, we accompany Jackie on her heavy, dragging journey towards confrontation. She is completely unprepared for this process, but her meandering pursuit feels natural and miserably necessary. As in life, revenge comes in fits and starts, knowing only that one must do something, acting impulsively, planning for conflict, even violence, but freezing up in the moment.
Ultimately, it is in this frozen state that the man, Clyde (Tony Curran), finally notices his watcher, and oblivious to their circumstances, approaches her. The complexity of the resulting relationship throws a bizarre, half-welcome sexuality into Jackie's psychological process' while Clyde is the man that Jackie hates more than anyone in the world, she finds relief from loneliness in his aggressive attention. There are no easy answers for Jackie, and her conflicted narrative pounds forward with breathless insistence.
Von Trier's Advance Party Project has two films still to come, which will be written and directed by two different artists, and will be centered around the same characters and city. Arnold has set the bar high for the next two with Red Road, her feature debut. Arnold's limited experience is not totally invisible; audiences should be prepared to accept a moment or two of heavy-handed symbolism, and while effective for her purposes, the pacing of the film might be a little too laborious for some. However, it's likely you'll be so taken with the performances of Dickie and Curran that you won't even notice the film's few shortcomings, and Arnold's intelligent, humanistic, and honest approach to such complex and cliché-prone terrain as revenge reveals her as a wonderful and exciting new talent from whom we may see a lot of great things in the future.
