Feux rouges

The first thing to take note in Red Lights is that the story is not rushed: Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darrousin) is perhaps a passive-aggressive, or maybe just having a mid-life crisis. He and his wife Helene are planning for a trip to pick up the kids from summer camp. But the drive hits some things in the way- he has a beer and a whiskey before leaving; a traffic jam gets to Antoine; he drinks again at a roadside; he and his wife bicker; he drinks again; she leaves, and once he realizes he can't catch up with her, he decides to have a night with a little more drinking ahead. While he says he doesn't drink too often ("two, three times a year", he says), this night is different. Especially with a fugitive somewhere out on the loose, as the radio says.

Cedric Kahn is a skilled and trust-worthy director (via France) for a few reasons in dealing with his latest film Red Lights. He doesn't make the pace in the tenser scenes (with a couple of juicy exceptions) really quick cut like in a choppy Hollywood piece. He brings an interesting blend of visuals with the city and the roads, the cars, then as it grows darker outside, the lights outside become key. When Antoine awakes the next morning on the roadside, he's out in the country. As well, he has a great blend of music from Debusy, whom I may have heard before this film but never recognized. It's a fascinating element to add with the impending doom of the film's story. But the key thing that the director can do for a film is the right casting, and here's it's impeccable in dealing with the three leads. Jean-Pierre Darrousin is terrific at conveying the mind-set of this husband in a rocky relationship. Then in the second and third acts, despite what he's doing on the road, he keeps consistent in keeping as the film's reluctant hero. Credit should also be given to first-time actor Vincent Deniard, who is perfect at being the "quiet one you got to watch". And Carole Bouquet is a fair counterpart to a Darrosin.

Although the denouement starts to drag, for my money the film's main chunk doesn't. It would be one thing if Antoine just got drunk. But there's also a good interest in the talking points with the character, as he decides to blow his mind in the process. Red Lights is definitely an art-house film that won't please everyone (the film ends rather realistically, without the kind of extra bit American audiences might want that's more intimate here), but it's still very compelling.

Opens with brilliantly shot sequences and if it then moves into more traditional French bourgeoisie territory it does it with passion and intelligence. As the narrative unfolds, involving a car drive that begins tetchy and proceeds to become really scary, we identify with the main protagonists and are as concerned as the male lead when the other disappears. A lot of the first part of the film is shot through the front screen of the car but this is so well done with the accompanying dialogue, developing tragedy and suspense we are almost on the edge of our seats. We lurch into nightmare territory and things become almost unbearable as we struggle to assure ourselves as to what is really happening. I was not as interested as the director in the relationship between the high flying wife and the husband who sees himself as her poodle and presumably this is why I found the ending simplistic and verging on the insulting, but never mind a good ride up to then!

A decent but ultimately disappointing thriller. It feels like slow-moving imitation Clouzot, with elements from Les Diaboliques ("What really happened?"), The Wages of Fear (high tension on a long drive), and Quai des Orfevres (a similar plot point I don't want to reveal here).

With tighter editing, "Feux rouges" could have been a much stronger movie. It does contain a number of memorable scenes, especially those involving the protagonist and his second passenger. Not a bad film at all, but it doesn't deserve the rave reviews it has drawn from several major critics.

7/10

"Red Lights", a subtitled French film, spends it's 1.75 hour run following Antoine (Darroussin) and his wife Hélène (Bouquet) as they leave Paris for a night drive to Bordeaux to pick up their kids. What should have been an ordinary road trip turns into an extraordinary series of events which will leave the couple forever changed. The less you know about these events prior to viewing the better as any hint of what happens could lead to a case of mistaken genre and spoilage. This film is a human drama which doesn't attempt to entertain with extremes but rather opts to engross with a slowly seductive tale of intrigues kept to realistic proportion. "Red Lights" relies heavily on the ability to identify with the adult married couple and the problems they encounter and, therefor, will play best with mature adult audiences. A nicely managed, methodical and very believable film which spends most of its time with Darroussin, "Red Lights" received good marks from critics and public alike and is well worth a look by mature viewers into French flicks. (B+)

Red Lights is like a bad dream you might have if you nodded off over the wheel during a long car journey, with the roar of the motorway and the crunch of tyres on gravel seeping into your subconscious. It's so ambient, it would work just as well as a radio play. En route to collecting their kids from summer camp, 'married alive' couple Antoine (Pierre-Darroussin) and Helene (Bouquet) bicker in the car, as Antoine accuses her of cramping his style. The only way this sad little man can assert himself is to pull over and slug whisky after whisky in every roadside bar. When his furious wife bails out to catch the train instead, it's the start of one of those Long Dark Nights of the Soul for both parties. 'I got sick of playing the good little doggie', Antoine tells his mysterious hitchhiker, in one of the movie's most memorable exchanges. 'You're like my doggie,' sneers his passenger. 'Always thirsty.' 'Where's your dog?' 'He's dead…' Based on the Georges Simenon novel, here's a dark little number, blackly comic, and as searing as the red neon lights that accompany each pit stop on the road to Hell.