Red Lights

Synopsis: Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) is waiting for his wife Helene (Carole Bouquet), drinking a few beers in a Paris bar before they to go to fetch their kids from holidays in the South West of France. Things are starting badly. The couple is getting on each other's nerves, and the road is busy. When Antoine stops to have a drink his wife leaves, intending to finish the journey by train. Antoine's journey actually begins here. He will go through the night in an advanced state of drunkenness, meet a fugitive criminal (Vincent Deniard) en route, and wake up to chilling news.

Cédric Kahn is a promising French director, one hard to slot into a specific genre. With this film, developed from a popular Georges Simenon novel written in 1953 and set in America, he takes on a difficult task. Helped by a prestigious cast he manages to turn in a successful auteur movie in the thriller format that is also about a middle-class couple and their marital relationship.

Helene is a high-flying lawyer, Antoine only works in a insurance company. He is tired and frustrated and drinks to sustain his self-esteem, to be the "real man" he wants to be. Like all characters in Simenon's books, he pathetically wants to change his life and ends up in desperate situations. Like all leads in Kahn's movies (compare for instance Roberto Succo and L'Ennui), the hero is desperately trying to escape his condition.

When his wife eventually leaves to take the train, Antoine is not alone: her presence remains strong. From this point, he "enters a tunnel" as Simenon puts it. Antoine first attempts to catch her up, then, after the nightmarish and violent encounter with the convict he has picked up, he tries to find her although she seems to have disappeared. Fortified by alcohol, he attempts to behave like the man he wants to be. What is happening could almost be a bad dream as thriller intertwines with domestic drama.

Kahn manages to build the tension artfully. From the start, when the couple is on the road, there is a chilling feeling that something will go badly wrong. Antoine behind the wheel, more and more inebriated, is on the verge of having an accident; the arguments add to the unsettling atmosphere and there is something of Hitchcock in the looming un-described threat (all the night car scenes were shot in a studio an approach which adds effectively to the oppressive mood). Like the last reel of Catherine Breillat's A Ma Soeur, the tension builds for each kilometre the car travels.

Jean-Pierre Darroussin's performance is impressive. He is on the screen most of the time, in very demanding situations, and brilliantly conveys the image of a desperate ordinary man trying to take control of his life in extraordinary circumstances.

In the second part, the movie looses the hypothetic dramatic interest of the almost unreal first part. The final section of the film is arguably dubious, but nevertheless Kahn manages to make it work and Feux Rouges is a thriller that will stay with you in memory. If you liked Dominik Moll's Harry, He is Here To Help or the aforementioned A Ma Soeur, this one is for you.

 

 

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