Notes on Red Road

OK, so posting a blog about how I don't have time to blog these days made me remember how easy it is really to fit in a few minutes of blogging now and then! Anyway, I promised a while back I'd write about films I saw in Cannes this year, and since Andrea Arnold's first feature, Red Road, was my favourite of the 17 films I saw, I thought I'd post a few notes on why it's great and you should all look out for it over the next few months (maybe longer outside UK?)

Right, the basic outline: set in Glasgow, we watch a female CCTV operator as she surveys the city's streets, alleys and estates, warning police of any trouble. We get drawn in to her voyeurism as she zooms in on lovers' trysts, passers by, ordinary people with their daily routines. We also become aware that, like the Lady of Shalott, she sees the world through this 'mirror' and is somehow rather isolated from interacting with it - she is someone traumatised by her past. When she spots a man who we guess has played some role in this past trauma, she becomes obsessed with watching him and gradually finds herself following him outside the safety of the CCTV control room, into the shady, threatening atmosphere of the notorious Red Road housing estate (do you call these 'projects' in Canada, like in the US?).

This film has so many compelling elements - I love the way it manages to be a tense, moving personal drama about a woman confronting the ghosts and loss of her past through a kind of violent-sexual inner-turmoil, but is also a fascinating meditation on wider issues of urban fear and security, of class striation in city space and of the voyeurism and surveillance of the CCTV age.

The narrative works in an intelligent appropriation of the thriller mode, as we gradually discover what happened in the past and wait with baited breath to see what she will do about it in the future. Does she want to kill this man? Or fuck him? Or simply get a close-up glimpse of his life, seeing beyond the fuzzy outlines of close circuit TV images?

The film is also beautifully shot and edited to emphasise the divisions between different spaces - her cold and tidy home, the neon-lit shadowy tower blocks of Red Road (with the boundaries blurred by those amazing, madly-frustratingly indistinct cctv images, reminiscent of Antonioni's Blow Up, with its obsessive enlarging of photographs to discover a trace of a crime that might never have happened). With naturalistic acting by unknown actors, this is gritty Scottish realism but all constructed to remind us how the 'real' is constantly being mediated by images, and how the watcher has as much affect on its meaning as the watched...

Don't know if it's got a UK distributor yet but I hope this wonderful film gets the attention it deserves... I'll try to write these notes up as a proper review for my friend's review site sneersnipe sometime in the coming months.

Thanks for reading.

Ghost in the shell

I like this film a lot. It makes me think about my concept of "SELF" and where that resides...is it in my body? or is it....? Self Self Self, where are you?

posted by Kee Kees!

Friends in a time of "crabby"

I am really thankful for my friends. I have been really moody and crabby lately. I think it's maybe a combo of things, but despite this, my friends seem to be able to lift my spirits no matter what. I think maybe they don't realize how much they help. I don't think there are words that will adequately express this love. Thank you all.

p.s. I am trying not to be crabby, but it seems to get worse as I get older. Recommendations?



KK

Art Openings are WEIRD

I had an art opening yesterday. It was quite a lot of preparation, but seemed to go off without a hitch. I felt truly supported by my friends, they are ace.
But I must say, that it is VERY difficult to accept compliments. It makes me squirm like a trout. It's so hard to just stand there and say, 'thank you". I just want to run away, occasionally turning back and pointing, and yelling "liar...liar, pants on fire!"

I hope I am not singularly nuerotic about this...but It's SO difficult. It scares me even. My brain always cuts in with "their just saying that to get something out of you".

I ALWAYS feel like a cornered animal. The only comments I really take to heart seem to be the extra harsh criticisms. For some reason, these are the rare meats that I hanker for. I wish I made sense. Sorry.