Red Lights Movie Review:


This surprising and disturbing French thriller works as both a detailed examination of urban marriage and a creepy road movie. Director-cowriter Kahn approaches his films with such unflinching honesty that he really gets into our heads!

Antoine and Helene (Darroussin and Bouquet) are a frazzled couple who, on the hottest day of the year, are driving to the opposite end of the country to collect their two kids from summer camp. Tensions are high and patience is short. Antoine keeps stopping for shots of whiskey, and during one break Helene abandons him, leaving a note to say she's taking the train. What follows is a wrenching odyssey as Antoine tries to catch up with Helene's train, then has a scary encounter with a stranger (Deniard). But even this doesn't prepare him for what he discovers next.

Kahn captures a sense of modern chaos so perfectly that we never doubt this couple--they love each other and yet can't stand to be near each other, simply because life has become so unbearably stressful. Delays, traffic jams and other urban annoyances combine to push them to the brink ... and then the (somewhat contrived) events that follow push them right over the edge, where they finally approach a sense of perspective.

Darroussin and Bouquet are excellent--we can identify with both of them, laughing in recognition while seeing details that give us insight into these people, their reactions and potential actions as well. As their relationship is strained to the breaking point, we really feel their sense of cynicism, paranoia and fear. And then the writers exploit that with a chilling plot twist that seems to come out of nowhere to jolt us awake (like Catherine Breillat's A Ma Soeur or Gaspar Noe's Irreversible). What follows is astonishingly gripping and moving, especially an extended scene in which Antoine uses the phone to sort out what has turned into a fiercely unsettling mystery. This is a film about rash decisions and sudden events that can change life in an instant--for good or bad. Or maybe bringing good from bad.

Rich Cline

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