Red Road

Director: Andrea Arnold
Screenwriter: Andrea Arnold
Starring: Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Martin Compston, Natalie Press
Running time: 113 mins
Certificate: 18

Kate Dickie plays Jackie, a CCTV operator remotely surveying the movements of people in a run-down part of Glasgow. She is introduced as a lonely figure whose only human interaction away from the workplace is semi-regular passionless sex with a married man. One night, as well as the dog-owner and dancing cleaner she usually watches over, she spots a shifty character from her past, Clyde (Curran). From that moment her empty life is filled with an obsession to confront him. We are kept enthralled as Jackie follows, both on CCTV and in person in his life, appearing at his house party and following him into pubs and cafes.

Red Road is the first instalment of a trilogy of films in the Advance Party project. Each created by a different director, the films must somehow utilise each of seven characters outlined by writers Anders Thomas Jensen and Lone Scherfig in a Scotland-based story. Occasionally this isn't entirely seamless, with the odd character appearing for no important function, but this is an extremely impressive debut feature effort from director Andrea Arnold, using the constraints to her advantage.

Those characters on which Arnold chooses to focus are well-crafted and intriguing. We are introduced to Jackie as an unexciting and unhappy woman but otherwise know very little of her, which remains the case for most of the film, learning about her only through her ambiguous intentions towards Clyde, himself an equal mystery other than the fact that he's fresh out of jail and living with flatmates Stevie (Compston) and April (Press).

Although the characters' past relationship isn't spoon-fed to us until the film's conclusion, we are given more than an inkling much sooner. This means that the journey lasts longer than necessary, though to her credit Arnold holds interest until the end, albeit aided by some not entirely credible actions by Jackie.

Red Road is a gritty and dark movie, both in its aesthetic and its handling of themes of sexuality, loss and revenge, Arnold making every use of her Glasgow settings to set the mood.

Though a tad long, Arnold's opening to the Advance Party project is sure to leave audiences wanting to see more.