Chastity, sweet cinematic chastity

I don't tend to watch individual films at home on a whim; usually I'm working my way through the complete oeuvre or one director or another. (Michael Haneke currently occupies that spot. Expect a post about him whenever I've gotten through The Piano Teacher, Time of the Wold and The White Ribbon.) But something about Andrea Arnold's Red Road piqued my interest, and so I found a Netflix-red envelope containing it my my mailbox not much later.

Despite having drawn nearly implausible degrees of acclaim — the Observer named it one of the 25 best UK films of the past quarter century, for fuck's sake! (as a Brit might put it) — it's not a particularly innovative movie. Its willingness to reveal Glasgow's moist, cartoonishly dreary underbelly — assuming that's not its regular belly — to use only existing light and the substantial darkness it entails and to let much of the action play silently over scanline-heavy video feeds is admirable, but those qualities ultimately serve a fairly pedestrian structure.

Red Road is one of these movies that drip-feeds its audience information about a lonely, inscrutable protagonist, building to A SHOCKING REVEAL. In this case, she's a watcher of CCTV camera monitors, working all night at a console beneath a dystopian grid of screens blinking urban decay, thugs plyin' drugs, lower-class copulation, etc. I think we're meant to wonder why she's got such a miserable, grim life and why she's so obsessed with one particular lowlife she spots on-camera. I'd tell you that the guy turns out to have been the drunk who once drove over her family, but you wouldn't believe me.

Formal and thematic ultra-conventionality aside, though, this is a tale told with superb aesthetics. The production restraints seem a little Dogme 95-ish, most noticeably in its lighting conditions, which, for the style of the film, is all to the good. No surprise, then, that it's the first of the Advance Party concept trilogy, with rules developed through discussions between three producers and Lars von Trier. Though these rules don't seem to be laid out clearly anywhere public, here's what I've gleaned:

• They must be made different first-time directors and producers
• The scripts must either start with one or more pre-defined characters, or they can subject them to external drama.
• The films must take place in Scotland
• All the characters must appear in all the films, played by the same actors (this is the most intriguing rule, I think)

Alas, there's not much available in terms of production rules, but by the look of Red Road, there must be something Dogme 95-ish going on. For those who've forgotten, the movement's "Vows of Chastity" are as follows:

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in. If a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic.
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable (if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action (murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (that is to say that the film takes place here and now).
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen.
10. The director must not be credited.

I tend to like vows of chastity (except those that require actual chastity). The creativity that emerges from limitations having turned into something of an obsession of this blog, that presumably comes expected. But couldn't both the Advance Party and Dogme 95 vows be made more interesting? My proposed modifications follow:

• Dialogue may only be hears when the character speaking is not visible
• All zooms-in must also be dollies-out, and all zooms-out must also be dollies-in
• Filming must be done on lower State, exclusively between the porn store and the vacant former Esau's
• Actors must be aged between 36 and 37.5 years, but no character's age may fall within that range
• No dissolves may be used; only "rotating cubes"