Artwork courtesy of Tartan Films
Not since Hitchcock’s Rear Window has anyone even remotely come close to effectively combining suspense and voyeurism like Andrea Arnold’s first feature-length film, Red Road.  Both written and directed by the Academy Award winning filmmaker (Wasp, 2005), Red Road delves into the rarely explored world of surveillance, voyeurism, and revenge by peeking in on an isolated camera operator as she watches a darker side of life.  Dozens of video screens fill the dark surveillance room in which Jackie (Kate Dickie) works for CCTV, monitoring the tower blocks of Glasgow’s Red Road projects.  Through these screens, socially removed Jackie connects to the outside world by watching everyone else’s daily lives.  When she’s not spying on the neighborhood secretly dancing, having sex, or walking their dogs, Jackie has perfunctory flings with a married coworker in his van.  One day, Jackie spots the familiar face on her video screen of Clyde Hammons (Tony Curran), a man fatefully tied to her past.  At first, all she does is watch him.  Then she transforms from removed surveyor into active life participant when she leaves her isolated monitors and begins to follow Clyde.  All the while, Arnold expertly suspends us in Jackie’s voyeurism all the way through her inevitable encounter with Clyde before completely turning the tables on us at the end.  The film also has some minor secondary characters, such as Jackie’s father-in-law Alfred (Andy Armour), and Clyde’s roommate Stevie (Martin Compston), and Stevie’s girlfriend April (Natalie Press).  However, since Red Road is only the first film to be released from the Advance Party Concept, which consists of three different directors writing separate scripts around the same group of characters in Scotland, there is always the possibility their storylines will be further developed later on in one of the remaining films.  What makes the voyeurism angle so effective in Red Road is Arnold’s use of “purified” elements taken from the Dogme 95 film movement.  The entire film is shot with a hand-held camera on location (no sets), only diagetic music is heard (no soundtrack), no superficial action occurs, and it takes place in the present.  Her subjective camera, emotional color scheme, and muted sound also add to the avant-garde tonality of the film, especially during the NC-17 sex scene that’s only lighted by a flickering lamp knocked over in the throws of passion.  Another missing element in Red Road is the dialogue.  It’s not completely gone, but the characters do seem to go lengthy periods of time without speaking.  Of course, that’s just another one of Arnold’s ploys.  By removing some of the dialogue, she effectively manipulates us into the same voyeuristic world we are watching onscreen by forcing the audience to just sit and study these characters without distraction as they continue to observe one another.  When you stop and think about it, the audience then becomes a voyeur of the voyeur of the voyeur.  Ironic, isn’t it?  © Kelly Bartley 2007
Running Time:	1 hr. 53 min.
Release Date:	March 9, 2007 (NY/LA), May 25, 2007 (limited)
MPAA Rating:	Not Rated (for mature audiences)
Distributor:	Tartan Films