Red Road

Jackie is a young woman who surveys the streets of Glasgow through security cameras. One day on her screens she recognizes Clyde, who has recently been released from jail. It soon becomes clear that Jackie is suffering from a major trauma in which Clyde played a crucial role. She decides to approach the man indirectly and makes friends with several of his flatmates. Almost like a quintessential Atom Egoyan character, Jackie has become a passive observer of other people‘s lives. Dwarfed by a bank of monitors, she sees fragments of stories and the vast underbelly of Glasgow‘s mean streets. Red Road takes its name from the street of notorious high-rise apartment blocks where Clyde lives and Arnold lets the camera linger over the detritus of modern urban living, from streets strewn with fast-food cartons to abandoned skips and graffiti-covered walls. There is misery at the heart of the story, but the narrative takes some unexpected turns and what feels like a journey of utter despair becomes a road to redemption reminiscent of von Trier‘s Breaking The Waves. (Allan Hunter)