Andrea Arnold is a great filmmaker. She’s in control every step of the way and never made me feel I was watching a film as much as watching the story unfold. In Red Road, voyeurism is a big theme, as well as the breaking of boundaries. The lines between private and public, past and present, arousal and repulsion, garbage and beauty flit back and forth.

You can’t deny that Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves is a great film, though it isn’t a film you run out and recommend to someone without warning them first. (It’s not something I would subject myself to a second time either.) Red Road comes with the same caution. It is explicit and disturbing, but as it should be for the uncompromising choices the filmmaker makes. I have to admire the craft.