Under the beautiful carpet

Red Riding (1974)

Crit

Let me just say that my memories of Yorkshire feature a majestic Gothic cathedral and a lovely bed and breakfast with friendly hosts. Though it's true I didn't stray very far from the A19. (And OK, actually, I don't remember anything about the B&B, but pretty much everywhere we stayed fit that description.) This Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, is a place where the sun never shines, the architecture looks like crime, and very bad things happen repeatedly to the genitals of a man who doesn't mind his own business. (Also occasional very good things, but somehow the bad are more persuasive.)

Julian Jarrold directed the first of the trilogy (wanted to watch them all in a day, but the theater didn't cooperate--but I'm not complaining, 'cause I didn't expect the flicks to show up here at all), and he leaves you looking for a grittier word for "gritty." Andrew Garfield plays a newspaper reporter whose daddy issues seem the main motivation for his hell-for-leather determination to find the truth about a series (or maybe not a series) of disappearances of young girls; Rebecca Hall, who convinces me more every time I see her how good she is, plays one of the grieving mothers, who also has additional issues stacked on the coffee table; and Eddie Marsan appears too briefly as, according to him, the sort of disillusioned reporter that Garfield's character is fated to become.