Exciting, insightful ... and Carole Bouquet
Added 2/24/2009
Easily one of the best movies I've seen in a while that had me on the edge of my seat wondering what will happen next. The story is told in unpretentious cinematic terms and the acting is superb. Watch it with someone you love because you will want to talk about it for a long time.
Helene and Antoine are a Parisian couple married for some ten years with two young children. "Helene" is well-chosen because she is played by former Bond girl and Chanel #5 model Carole Bouquet, one of the world's most beautiful women with a face that could "launch a thousand ships." Antoine is no Paris, by comparison, quite the opposite. He's a rather ordinary looking fellow who works for an insurance company while Helene is much in demand in the glamorous world of corporate law and evidently makes a lot more money. How exactly these two ever got together is something of a mystery - maybe the Georges Simenon story on which the movie is based has more on the subject. Suffice to say that Antoine does realize who Helene is, is still very much in love with her, and has a hard time taking his eyes off her.
It's summer, which in France means it's time to go on holiday. Off they go heading south from Paris to retrieve the kids away at camp. The roads are crammed with vacationers, everyone going in the same direction. It's slow going. Antoine is impatient and decides to get off the main highway to try a shortcut, which annoys Helene. Her backseat driving gets on his nerves, so he stops to get a drink but tells Helene he needs to take a leak. More trouble bubbles to the surface as they drive off in search of the way back to the main highway. Antoine by now has had a fair amount to drink - he was loaded when they started - the booze has gone to his head and starts to talk. He reproaches his wife for treating him like a lackey, for controlling his life, for seeming to enjoy the company of other men more, and so on. "Stop," she yells, exasperated. This only adds fuel to the fire because Antoine pulls off the road again, for another drink. "If you get out," Helene warns, "you're going on alone by train." Antoine takes the key out of the ignition and walks away to the bar. He returns about 20 minutes later only to find that Helene has left.
All this is by way of Act I. I won't spoil it by describing the rest, except to suggest that the viewer go with the flow and not try to outguess the director. Instead, here are three insights I picked up.
1. Being married to a beautiful woman is a two-sided coin. On one side, well, you know what's there, including "trophy wife." On the other, it's extremely tempting for a man to be so in awe with a woman's beauty - even at 46, Bouquet is as stunning as ever - that he becomes a complete doormat, caves on everything, and loses self-respect. That's what happens to Antoine. He's lucky enough to recover, through a series of unexpected events, but that only happens in the movies if the script says so. I suppose it's a good thing that women like Helen of Troy, Garbo, Carole Bouquet come along seldom ... LOL.
2. Regardless how happy we may think we are, our lives nevertheless exemplify fairly stable patterns - train tracks - that we settle into over time more or less without realizing it. Be careful, the movie seems to say, if you're thrown into a completely new situation, if the train derails, that forces you to realize the extent to which you're on auto pilot. You are now off balance and must figure out how to get back on track without the help of past experience, which is useless. That happens to Antoine and Helene, and both eventually recover but at a high price. Strong people can manage it, but not everyone passes the test. (I wrote a script on this theme myself once, "Fancy Free.")
3. Two people may well start out deeply in love, strongly attracted to each other, get married, raise a family, and assume obligations of various kinds along the way. But what if one or the other or both realize they're no longer in love at some point in the marriage and are staying together out of habit or a sense of duty or something completely unrelated to why they got together in the first place? Antoine still loves Helene but she seems indifferent. Events cause her to change her mind later and she does come to see Antoine in a different, and better, light at the end. But again, that's the movies. How do you live with someone who no longer loves you or takes your love for granted?
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A French detour into Hitchcock territory.
Added 10/23/2007
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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Red Lights
Added 7/23/2007
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.
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one wild vacation
Added 2/17/2007
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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Unsettling road trip thriller from France
Added 11/11/2006
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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