Red Lights | Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet | Unsettling road trip thriller from France

Red Lights | Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet | Red Lights

DVDs:

Red Lights

	Red Lights Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet Fox Lorber, 2005 average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

2004 Nominee Independent Spirit Award - Best Foreign Fim. It's a summer holiday weekend in Paris. Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a timid insurance salesman, and his lawyer wife Hélène (Carole Bouquet) are off to the south of France to pick up their children from camp. They begin to quarrel while on the road. He pulls over for a drink at a bar along the highway. When he returns, she is gone. He dashes to the train station to try to meet her but is too late. Darkness has fallen and, left alone to continue the journey, Antoine picks up a strange hitchhiker, not knowing he might have already crossed paths with his soon-to-be-missing wife...Based on a novel by Georges Simenon (Maigret), Cédric Kahn's (L'Ennui, Roberto Succo) edge-of-your-seat thriller masterfully evokes the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol.

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Unsettling road trip thriller from France

Based on a novel by "Maigret" author Georges Simenon, "Red Lights" is both a moody and tense psychological thriller--and the study of a marriage under pressure--set within the claustrophobic confines of a car trip.

Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is a quiet and somewhat nondescript insurance salesman married to Helene (Carole Bouquet), a partner at a high-powered law firm. Antoine's rather meek and passive demeanor belies the smoldering resentments he harbors towards his more successful wife. Leaving to pick up their children from summer camp, Helene is both confused and irritated when Antoine insists upon stopping at various bars along the highway for a drink. The mask of a cordial and accommodating husband soon slips away as Antoine begins to veer from petulant and sulking to openly antagonistic. Antoine's alcohol consumption also leads to his increasingly erratic driving. When he refuses to let his wife drive, the couple's squabbling escalates until it reaches a point where Helene threatens to continue the trip without him. Defiantly stopping at yet another bar, Antoine confiscates the keys and leaves a furious Helene in the car to await his pleasure. Upon his return, Helene is gone.

The mystery behind Helene's disappearance and Antoine's strange alcohol-fueled journey without her lies at the heart of this low key thriller. "Red Lights" is a perplexing and enigmatic character study of a man who has let his frustrations over his less than fulfilling and somewhat unremarkable life disastrously cloud his judgment. At one point, he picks up a brooding hitchhiker who may well be a fugitive and attempts to forge an insane camaraderie with him.

Various television new reports covering the search for the escaped convict and the mounting holiday highway death toll fuels the film's growing sense of dread and uncertainty. Hypnotic ribbons of highway--and the red neon lights of the bars which seem to almost float in the nighttime sky--gives the film an almost dreamlike quality at times. However, the glue that really holds this film together is Darrousin's performance. He manages to make Antoine a very flawed and human protagonist, eliciting our anger at his terrible behavior and our fear for him at his poor choices and their terrifying consequences. Although inexcusable, Antoine's childish 'acting out' with Helene emanates from his feelings of jealousy and insecurity at being married to a beautiful and more accomplished woman. Darrousin's subtle body language and his sad, hangdog expression speak volumes. Antoine is truly one of Thoreau's `men who lead lives of quiet desperation.'

"Red Lights" cannot really be described as a high octane thriller. Rather, it is one that builds slowly--in stages--and is dependent on mood and tone. However, your patience will be rewarded with a rich and complicated story full of twists and turns. In French with English subtitles.

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Red Lights

Cracker-jack, white knuckle suspense from director Cedric Kahn works as both human drama and crime tale. Just when deep-seated problems force a marriage off the road, a random, external force intrudes, bringing with it a life and death element, and putting those other familiar issues in perspective. But is it already too late for Antoine and Helene? Both the leads tackle their demanding roles with gusto, so we feel fully invested in the outcome.

one wild vacation

the French certainly have a special niche for offbeat suspense thrillers.. From clouzot to the french noir of the new wave to the modern high class hitchcock like flicks that grace festival after festival..
'Red lights' is certainly one of the top of the heap - it has the most gripping, edgy, unsettling feeling to it.. You feel like you are on the edge of a cliff about into fall into an unfathomable abyss.. This is a film which taunts you on the most direct psycological levels.. The story is of a man who is at his wits end - who is tired of following the straight and narrow train like path of daily existence.. He wants to find a sort of freedom.. and he does.. but the results, of course, are not quite what one would expect.. This is a very intoxicating movie with an excellent acting performance.. It is a great example of French suspense- but at the same time it is unique - i've never seen anything quite like it.

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A French detour into Hitchcock territory.

Adapted from a Georges Simenon novel, Cédric Kahn's thriller, Red Lights ("Feux Rouges"), tells the tense story of a middle-aged couple, Wallace Shawn look-alike Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and Hélène (Carole Bouquet), who drive to Paris in heavy traffic to pick up their two children at summer camp. Along the way, Antoine (an insurance salesman) drinks, getting progressively drunker, as Hélène (a corporate lawyer) chides him. They quarrel and shout at each other. After Antoine takes a detour (leading straight into Hitchcock territory), Hélène leaves him a note saying she's taking the train instead, prompting inebriated Antoine to spend the night frantically searching for his missing wife in cafés, train stations, hospitals, and police stations. To add to the suspense, after a dangerous prisoner has escaped from LeMans, Antoine decides to offer a mysterious hitchhiker a ride. Although the film eventually returns from its unexpected detour to the romantic drama it once was, it succeeds as both a weird French thriller and romantic drama. This film is far from predictable.

G. Merritt

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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