Red Road

2007

I had an experience watching this film that I've had before, and that you've all probably had as well. As I watched it I didn't like it at all, but when I started to look back on it and write about it, I realized that it was not a bad movie.

The reason for that? That phenomenon isn't easy to explain for some films, but in this case it is. Red Road would be a terrific one-hour episode of Masterpiece Theater. It's filled with plusses, with interesting moments to look back on. Unfortunately, it is actually 104 minutes long and the pacing is therefore far too slow. I'm being charitable. It would be merely slow if it were a straight drama, but it is a mystery, which means it seems to move at the pace of tectonic shifting. The impact of the glacial pace is compounded by a bewildering array of nearly indecipherable Glaswegian accents that make it very difficult to understand what's going on in those few moments when something actually is going on. I have to confess that I actually fell asleep twice while trying to watch this film, and I had to shut it off two other times to avoid falling asleep some more.

Kate Dickie plays a CCTV observer in Glasgow. The UK is now covered with surveillance cameras, but they would be useless if nobody were actively monitoring their output, so various civil service grinds spend hour after hour studying banks of monitors for possible suspicious activity. Kate is one such grind. She seems to be distracted by something on the monitors which is outside the purview of her job. She is focused in on one guy who doesn't really seem to be doing anything wrong. Her surveillance of the man eventually extends beyond the camera views. She starts stalking him through his high-rise public housing project. The film's POV is hers, so we are led to believe that he's some kind of bad guy and that she has been wronged by him in the past, but when we actually see their encounters, he seems like a decent man trying to make the best of a difficult life. We can only conclude that something connects her to him, and that she considers it tragic, but we are kept in the dark about the specific nature of that connection.

At first it seems that she intends to kill him. Then she decides to seduce him. What's going on? The first 3/4 of the film unravels as a mystery. Her motivations are kept secret as long as possible. You can probably guess that what begins as a mystery film makes a metamorphosis into a hand-wringing drama as the curtains are drawn.

Red Road received 88% positive reviews and was awarded a special jury prize at Cannes, but it proved to be one of those unmarketable films made specifically for critics. It grossed only about a million dollars world-wide, and never reached more than 11 theaters in the United States.

Kate Dickie gets completely naked twice. One time she shows T&A briefly while looking at herself in her bathroom mirror. The other time is a long and VERY graphic sex scene which includes an erection and either real cunnilingus or a very near miss. These clips are 720p, and the quality is quite good (much better than previous clips and caps we've seen from this film). Samples below.

 

 

 

 

The Six Wives of Henry Lefay

(filmed in 2007; unreleased)

This is a comedy about a serial groom (Tim Allen) who dies in an accident, leaving behind a wife, a daughter and a host of ex-wives. Since he has left the wives conflicting instructions about what to do with his remains and his funeral arrangements, it is up to his competent but beleaguered daughter to straighten things out and keep peace among her stepmothers, some of whom are her own age or younger. Various surprises ensue, but not enough hilarity, as you might expect from the unreleased status of the film. The Wikipedia page still lists it as "upcoming."

The most interesting thing about the film is some mammoth cleavage from Jenna Elfman as the craziest of the ex-wives, and even a brief nude scene in which she or a body double show some buns (as does Tim Allen!) Where did Elfman get those enormous boobs? She had a baby two months before this film was lensed.

The quality of these clips is so-so.