Beautifully shot, gripping, disturbing.
Drama, thriller.
Sex, release from prison, surveillance, revenge.
Moving, devastating, brutally honest performances.
How meaningful are these taglines? Do the well-worn, blurb-like, choppy bits in any way help in verbalizing one's very private response to this gem of a movie and to movies in general? And to what extent can the "generic surplus" make the viewers forget or ignore the initial guttural response to what they saw on the screen?
Andrea Arnold's Red Road, a subversive take on panopticism in its more private version, invites questions concerning the viewing of films and WRITING about films - it feeds the voyeuristic impulse, gives it a rationale, and then cruelly deprives the viewers of their smug expectations. Perhaps that is why it never stood the chance of wide release, even though it offers both width and release.
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