Red Lights (2004)

This is the first and only film I have seen by Cedric Kahn, so I have no way of judging if this is one of his better works, or less. I notice some reviewers expressed a total dislike for this film, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.As the film began, the drive took place, and the quibbles emerged between Antoine and his wife, I began to relate to the film because this scenario probably happens daily in many places across the world between a husband and a wife. What made this incident unique, and dramatic, is the other factors that came to play - encounters with a dangerous convict on the run by both protagonists, and Antoine's indulgence of alcohol resulting in him committing certain out-of-ordinary acts. I began to developed a sense of disdain for Antoine as the film progressed, until I saw redemption toward the end.This is a slow film that demands attention. It is one of the more memorable, contemporary French films that I have experienced in the past decade. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys French cinema.

We are all supposed to be shaking in our seats. After all, the director of this contrived and artificial piece of nonsense is confident that he has overwhelmed us with shock and horror. The problem is that nothing in the plot is remotely credible. Indeed, it is frankly impossible. Carole Bouquet and her husband are driving south from Paris and a convict has escaped from a prison. Husband and wife split up after a quarrel. One takes the train and the other drives. We are expected to believe that out of the sixty million people in France, the escaped convict on the same evening encounters only these two, separately! He rapes the wife on the train and tries to murder the husband in his car. He does these two things in separate places more or less at the same time. Surely this is carrying surrealism too far. Are we not entitled to the respect of some semblance of rationality in the plot of a film which is supposed to be a 'suspense' film? But it gets worse. The couple are supposed to be driving south to pick up their two children, aged 8 and 10, from summer camp. Despite this, they quarrel over nothing and the wife abandons the car. As for the husband, he has consumed several bottles of whiskey and numerous beers, is totally drunk, and is driving suicidally. What a way to pick up the kids! What is more astonishing is that we are meant to feel sympathy for the idiotic and irresponsible husband because, poor fellow, the convict whom he first approaches and then provokes turns on him. What a shame the convict didn't kill the useless twerp. What advanced state of decadence have the French media class entered now, when in film after film we are all expected to shed crocodile tears for despicable and loathsome characters? And this film was nominated for a prize at the Berlin Festival! What is going on? Has everybody gone completely raving mad? This film is not worth watching, and yet there are plenty of people around praising it. The characters are inhuman, and the plot is absurd. Somehow, somewhere, something very deep is going wrong with filmmakers in France, and their critics and festival juries. I called attention to this in my review of 'L'Enfant'. When the wholesome and delightful film 'Amelie' came out a few years ago, a chorus of French critics and media folk howled in protest about it and heaped abuse upon it in the press. There is a sickness, a deeply serious and growing sickness, amongst certain levels of the French media class. All sense of morality has been thrown overboard and a howling intolerance of anything wholesome arises from a baying pack of corrupt and arrogant media insiders. This is all very worrying for those like myself who love French culture and wish it to continue in some form which can continue to command some respect.

2004 was a good year for foreign films with Feux rouges and Mar adentro and Pedro Almodóvar's La Mala educación. Feux rouges is a great thriller in the style of Hitchcock.Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and Hélène (Carole Bouquet) play husband an wife who bicker with each other on a road trip to pick up their children from Summer camp. I bet that many, if not most, husbands may see a lot of themselves in Antoine; and many wives will see themselves in Hélène. It makes you really think about marriage.They split up, with one taking the train, and both come in contact with an escaped convict (Vincent Deniard, in his first film). What happens is the second best part of this film and what makes it a Hitchcock thriller.Not to be missed.

Darroussin gives a nuanced performance as a white-collar middle-aged alcoholic, but that's the problem: Antoine's drinking problems are supposed to be symptomatic of his marriage problems, not the other way around. Either Darroussin should have toned it down, allowing us to not suspect a chronic alcohol problem, or the director/screenwriter should have showed more compassion. As is, you feel coerced into accepting the myth of "curable alcoholism" in the end. Antoine is s@#tfaced throughout the middle of this movie, which would be fine for a Coen Bros. film with plenty of interesting secondary characters, but you can't do Hitchcock if Jimmy Stewart's character is f$#ked up for 45 minutes. If it's a suspense/thriller, your audience wants a sympathetic, lucid character who does not work against the suspense and thrills.