I suppose this might have been given more leeway, were it not for Cache that so perfectly mapped the same space just two years prior; still, there is tremendous power at the heart of this, about the mechanisms of the mind that generate narratives clouting a true world.
Alternately, you have the option of watching this for the story of sinister revenge, expressed with the gritty realism of a hostile environment the British know so well. How much you'll get out of it in this way depends on what personal pain you can supply, your own fill of bottled-up hurt that will remain unspoken as you probe around with this woman in search for redemption.
This is not the film's power for me though, its proper context is Blowup; there, it was an encounter with an inexplicable image that propelled a feverish effort of the mind to interpret, to attach a narrative around it, that gradually rendered the entire visible world a collection of inexplicable images. Cache masterfully updated this, by feeding from our position behind the camera the inexplicable image to the recipient, himself the source of that image, the facade, in ways that would align the search for that hidden camera filming the stage, a stage that was life, with a search for the true maker that generated the image.
Both these were masterful stuff on the formation of illusions, some of the best I know, that everyone should experience at least once. This one unswathes from them.
So once more we have a protagonist observing the world from an artificial eye, in fact many worlds at once, each one its own entry into life, it's a brilliant touch that we're given this from a CCTV control room because we're shown how she operates this world from the level of the gods, controlling by merely picking up a telephone, nevertheless it posits a fractured seeing that cannot embrace a unified whole; it is simply not the real thing, though the illusion is potent, cinematic.
This is all well until she encounters among the flow of images one that she knows, that wound deeply in the past and is not meant to exist at this point, we can tell this much from her reaction. She is gradually obsessed with solving the mystery posed by this. Of course, being self-absorbed with this image that is her past, she loses focus of the real world that matters. People get hurt as a result of negligence, that she could have prevented by simply looking at the right place.
The obsession consumes her so badly, that she literally emerges inside this baffling narrative, that presumably continues from where she left it, in an effort to apprehend the image from up close. Her involvement is carried out by acting a part, this is a clever touch, a part that promises promiscuous sex that grants her entry behind closed doors.
But from up close, it is no longer an image. There is escalating danger of us being apprehended inside this seamy underbelly of Glasgow. We are not meant to be exploring what we are, the film works this into a razor-sharp tension that slowly simmers with cheap booze and violent outbursts.
It is really powerful material up to this point, but which the filmmaker cannot properly align around the fact that it's an internal vision powering the whole, a pursuit from memory and desire. So we get a predictable denouement that reveals how all the different parts make sense, as though it was the whole point from the start.
There is too much that is blunt that we are suddenly tasked to handle emotionally, itself jerking us from our own position as observers.
Nonetheless, she preserves a fitting image for the redemptive aftermath; the woman is no longer observing from afar, from behind a screen, but walking down the road. Absolved from the painful processes of self-consciousness, seeing no longer fractured by the past, no longer framed, she can open up to the flow of life and be part of the whole again.
Alternately, you have the option of watching this for the story of sinister revenge, expressed with the gritty realism of a hostile environment the British know so well. How much you'll get out of it in this way depends on what personal pain you can supply, your own fill of bottled-up hurt that will remain unspoken as you probe around with this woman in search for redemption.
This is not the film's power for me though, its proper context is Blowup; there, it was an encounter with an inexplicable image that propelled a feverish effort of the mind to interpret, to attach a narrative around it, that gradually rendered the entire visible world a collection of inexplicable images. Cache masterfully updated this, by feeding from our position behind the camera the inexplicable image to the recipient, himself the source of that image, the facade, in ways that would align the search for that hidden camera filming the stage, a stage that was life, with a search for the true maker that generated the image.
Both these were masterful stuff on the formation of illusions, some of the best I know, that everyone should experience at least once. This one unswathes from them.
So once more we have a protagonist observing the world from an artificial eye, in fact many worlds at once, each one its own entry into life, it's a brilliant touch that we're given this from a CCTV control room because we're shown how she operates this world from the level of the gods, controlling by merely picking up a telephone, nevertheless it posits a fractured seeing that cannot embrace a unified whole; it is simply not the real thing, though the illusion is potent, cinematic.
This is all well until she encounters among the flow of images one that she knows, that wound deeply in the past and is not meant to exist at this point, we can tell this much from her reaction. She is gradually obsessed with solving the mystery posed by this. Of course, being self-absorbed with this image that is her past, she loses focus of the real world that matters. People get hurt as a result of negligence, that she could have prevented by simply looking at the right place.
The obsession consumes her so badly, that she literally emerges inside this baffling narrative, that presumably continues from where she left it, in an effort to apprehend the image from up close. Her involvement is carried out by acting a part, this is a clever touch, a part that promises promiscuous sex that grants her entry behind closed doors.
But from up close, it is no longer an image. There is escalating danger of us being apprehended inside this seamy underbelly of Glasgow. We are not meant to be exploring what we are, the film works this into a razor-sharp tension that slowly simmers with cheap booze and violent outbursts.
It is really powerful material up to this point, but which the filmmaker cannot properly align around the fact that it's an internal vision powering the whole, a pursuit from memory and desire. So we get a predictable denouement that reveals how all the different parts make sense, as though it was the whole point from the start.
There is too much that is blunt that we are suddenly tasked to handle emotionally, itself jerking us from our own position as observers.
Nonetheless, she preserves a fitting image for the redemptive aftermath; the woman is no longer observing from afar, from behind a screen, but walking down the road. Absolved from the painful processes of self-consciousness, seeing no longer fractured by the past, no longer framed, she can open up to the flow of life and be part of the whole again.