The Singapore Film Festival: Red Road

Never, never, never watch a movie filmed on handheld cameras while sitting on the front row. When you've just had dinner. Never, ever, ever do that. I got so sick halfway through the film that I ran up the aisle to the back of the theatre, sat down against the brick wall and proceeded to burp like mad. So if you were there and smelled onion rings and beef during the screening, I'm sorry.

Red Road is about a CCTV operator, obviously dissatisfied with her life and her greatest pleasure in life is to observe other people's lives through the cameras. And I lost the plot from then on because of the Scottish-accented dialogue. I barely made it through Trainspotting but this really pushed my comprehensionary boundaries, and then stomping and shitting on it after breaking it. Alright, I didn't lose the plot but I was struggling with the dialogue and it didn't help that I had nausea threatening to burst out of my ears.

To be honest, I expected something totally different from the film: Something like the life of a Big Brother, something more creepy but there wasn't enough of that. It's still an alright film but not $9.40-alright. That's how much they charged for a ticket at a "normal" FilmFest movie. For one of the opening and closing movies, probably because they are the more popular ones, it's $20. A little ridiculous but I can't comment further because I'm not well-versed in how the local screening of indie films works.

There was also an unnecessarily-long sex scene which had Clyde (Tony Curran) licking up Jackie (Kate Dickie) for around three minutes (No, I wasn't timing) before banging her for less than one. Even though it made me feel good about my abilities, it was still unnecessary but hey, it's supposed to be raw and real.

I hope the next two films that I've booked turn out better. Fuck, I just checked, they're on Row A and B.