I tried to think of a clever title—These Boots Are Made for Walkin’, Walk (Don’t Run), I’m Walkin’ (the Fats Domino ditty)—but nothing fit. When music won’t do, I tend to turn to Nicolas Roeg. The following has little to do with his 1971 masterpiece, but I’m still waiting for Roeg to get his due, so I like to drop his name whenever I get the chance…

So, after a weekend screening of Andrea Arnold’s Red Road, I was thinking about walkabouts—er, walkouts. I only noticed two, but when one catches my eye, I always wonder what turned off the viewer so much to make them flee (assuming their reasons were film-related in the first place). My friend and I quite liked Arnold’s debut.
It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I’m open to surprises.

At a certain point, the story transitions from a meditation on voyeurism (Kate Dickie’s Jackie is a surveillance expert) to a revenger’s tale, but the couple to our left departed long before Jackie enters the world of the trio she’s been surveilling. I’m guessing they simply found it dull. That wasn’t my impression, but I did find it increasingly hard to watch. The third act reminds me of Jane Campion’s In the Cut, in which an intelligent woman (a professor) purposefully puts herself in harm’s way. Jackie also places herself in a position where she could be raped or killed, but she retains greater control over the situation than Meg Ryan’s Frannie. If anything, Arnold gives away too much about Jackie’s motivations—I was hoping for more mystery—but the epilogue is sublime. Incidentally, though SIFF didn’t program Anton Corbijn’s acclaimed Ian Curtis bio-pic, Red Road does conclude with Joy Division (and I’ll take what I can get).

A few days before, I caught Milos Forman's Goya's Ghosts. A woman a few seats away left while Natalie Portman's character (an artist's model) is being tortured. It isn't a graphic scene, and it arrives early in the film, but I realize torture is a deal-breaker for some filmgoers. Not to give too much away, but she isn't killed (Portman also appears in Tom Tykwer's portion of Paris je t'aime, below).

As for Goya, I'm still mulling it over. I have the utmost respect for Forman, and there's much about the movie I admired, but it's unsatisfying. That doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it. With a cast that includes Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, and Michael Lonsdale, I couldn't miss it. And all are good, but I hear that Bardem is even better in the Coen Brothers' Cormac McCarthy adaptation No Country for Old Men, which has been piling up the accolades in France. That's yet another film SIFF didn't program, but there's no way they can snag all the Cannes entries. Anyway, if torture scenes are your bête noir, don't say you haven't been warned.

Lastly, there's the Phillipines selection The Bet Collector. I sit towards the front in most theaters, so I can never tell what's going on in the back, but this film inspired six walkouts (the body count was even higher at last year's press screening of Tsui Hark's Seven Swords). The movie may be intentionally discomforting, but it doesn't over-stay its welcome. Granted, the conclusion is confusing, but these folks left well before that time. As for me, I got swept up into the world of this slum-dwelling, chain-smoking bookie. I wanted to find out if Amy would make it to the end of the picture without being locked up or injured in a raid. The Bet Collector plays like a low-budget thriller, even though the only big set piece, a rooftop chase sequence, takes place during the prologue. So, it may have won me over, but six walkouts—if not more—indicates a divider, not a uniter. The title, as it turns out, is more apt than intended.

P.S. Ten Canoes, a big favorite Down Under, features Walkabout's David Gulpilil (the gent in the image at top) along with his son, Jamie. For more Gulpilil père, see The Last Wave, Rabbit-Proof Fence, and The Proposition. Please click the links for more information about Goya's Ghosts, The Bet Collector, and Ten Canoes. There are no more SIFF screenings of Paris, je t'aime, which opens at the Seven Gables on 6/1, and Red Road, which opens at the Varsity on 6/22.