Feux rouges

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 does not disappoint for artful cinematic tension, mining the rich resources of the French thriller -- no one can craft a thriller like the French. As the story unfolds, the viewer is driven increasingly into unease by the movie's primary conceit: the sudden unraveling of the milquetoast male lead before and then during a road trip into the country (in the throng of traffic during French vacation season) to pick up the couple's kids from camp. This ultimately has disastrous consequences for both husband and wife, despite their separating early in the story.

There are very effective touches here, unique to the French thriller. I especially liked Kahn's fearless willingness to run a protagonist straight into the ground so we can watch him grossly err and see him swerve into disaster, a risk most American directors wouldn't have the guts to take. He infuriates us and we are in total fear for him all at the same time. I also liked the way that Kahn can imbue simple sequences, like a series of phone calls, with utter tension.

What I did not like was the encroachment of pat, storytelling elements. The resolution is purely canned, and in particular there is one coincidence in the movie that is so Hollywood -- so Jerry Bruckheimer -- that it made me wince in embarrassment. It almost seems that, at the end, another director altogether stepped in to take the helm.

Red Lights is definitely worth seeing, but Kahn should have stayed the course with his somber, bold storytelling, rather than chickening out as he did. A good movie that could have easily been better.

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.

The first few seconds of 'Feux Rouges' show Antoine - a mid-age Parisian insurance agent - writing a loving mail to his wife on the verge of a family vacation. The last few seconds of the movie show the couple exchanging loving smiles while driving to the South where they would pick the children from a camp to continue together the vacation. Everything goes wrong in the in-between.

'Feux Rouges' starts as a relationship drama and turns into a thriller and a wrong-turn movie. It is inspired by a novel of the Georges Simenon, and as many of Simenon's novels the characters are far from being great communicators. The lack of communication, the routine and maybe the differences in social positions make of Antoine an unhappy husband who is ready to spoil the start of the vacations by heavy drinking while on road. Much of the movie happens on the road, and the gradual tension building picking with the disappearance of the wife Helen strikes a cord of uneasiness and even claustrophobia - great achievement for a film filmed on highways and roads with the sky almost permanently on view. As in many of Simenon's novels there is a moralistic twist, and justice is made even if it is completely the result of hazard and not of the will of men. And there is a huge price to pay for this justice, which we only can guess as it happens out of the screen and story time.

Director Cedric Kahn has learned a few lessons in thrillers from the great masters, and fist of all from Hitchcock. Antoine is wonderfully played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin as the type of character that we know from the very first moment that he will get into trouble and he indeed does all to confirm this, but it is the character of Helene played by Carole Bouquet that he relates to all the time and who is his focal point of frustration, worry and love.The simplicity of the story telling, the careful gradation of tension towards horror, the low key ending which does not solve the conflict, but just postpones it beyond the duration of the screening make of this film a worth watching piece of cinema.

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.