Echoes of "The Lives of Others" pervade this well-made debut from writer-director Andrea Arnold, an otherwise indulgent psychological thriller propped up by a compelling central performance by Kate Dickie as Jackie, a surveillance-room operator in Glasgow's inner sanctums. The veritable witness to life, purveyor of misanthropy and observing through isolation, Jackie is the centre of Arnold's slow-burn whispers for need and control, fantasy and madness. Envisioned as the first film in a new incarnation of Dogme 95-style cinema-realism protocols, it does become reminiscent of ambiguously serpentine art-house chic; the more it crawls up its own hole, the more aseptic it becomes. When it turns itself inside out with a dispassionate affair that cries wolf while pulling the rug from under, its subtle seduction becomes clear, locking its characters within a labyrinth of remorse, obsession and disfigured memory.
