Red Lights (2004) User Reviews

"The devil is on vacation with you"

[Mikeonalpha99 · 8/10 · 7 September 2005]

Red Lights is a strange, abstract, almost existential exercise in movie making. Adapted from the 1953 novel by Georges Simenon and set to Debussy's elegantly creepy Nuages, writer-director Cedric Kahn offers up movie with attributes of a Hitchcockian suspense thriller.

The feeling of foreboding begins immediately when we meet Antoine Dunant (Jean-Pierre Darroussin a low-level insurance executive. He's just leaving his job to meet his beautiful wife Hélène (Carole Bouquet) in a local café. They are planning to drive to the countryside from Paris to pick up their kids from summer camp.

But as soon as Antoine gets to the café he guzzles three beers back to back with one eye on the street lest his wife arrive before he's suitably fortified. It soon becomes pretty obvious that their marriage is far from happy - Antoine armed with enough drink to sink an elephant, settles into a manner of truculent impetuosity, while Helene remains detached, cold, and almost abusive.

While in the road, Helen discovers that her husband is utterly plastered. She hardly says anything as he weaves all over the road, but her silence speaks volumes. Thus starts a trip of barely controlled hostility with the husband clenching the wheel and brooding, while the wife fumes beside him. Both are so busy bickering with each other and thinking dark thoughts that they're half oblivious to news reports of an escaped convict on the loose nearby.

Antoine isn't usually a drinker, but something has snapped in him, and as the neon signs of the roadside bars start to beckon him, he becomes obsessed with downing as much cold beer and whisky as he can. He leaves Helene angrily waiting in the car while he goes into yet another bar, to prepare himself for the long night ahead.

Hélène, freaked by his increasing belligerence and inability to drive in a straight line, abandons her husband to look for a train station. Meanwhile Antoine strikes up a conversation with a reserved one-armed stranger (Vincent Deniard).

When, minutes later, the stranger steps out of the parking-lot shadows, his face half hidden by the hood of a sweatshirt, and asks for a ride, the cocky, staggering Antoine doesn't even break stride. By now he's so sweaty and drunk that he waves the fellow right into the car.

What follows is detour into a night of terror for Antoine, Helene, and for the viewer. The movie starts to resemble everyone's nightmare - the inexplicable disappearance of a loved one. And as Antoine embarks on a desperate journey to track his wife down, it soon becomes clear that Red Lights is really showing us a portrait of a marriage, a marriage that has been enigmatically hanging by a thread.

Their need to see the children again is probably just a way of distracting them from the aridness of their relationship. She's beautiful and accomplished, while he plain and dull. Somehow the couple began their marriage as equals, but she soon eclipsed him, for which he can't forgive her. Other than this, Kahn provides very little reason as to why their relationship has suddenly gone sour.

What Kahn does provide, however, is the knowledge that marriage can often dissipate completely, leave two strangers in a car, totally sick of each other, in desperate need of a reviving shock to the system. But when the sun finally rises, and Antoine is released from his drunken hell, Kahn does provide a dash of hope for the couple.

In the end, Red Lights is showing that relationships are frail and that the machinations of marriage are often inexplicable. And if nothing else, Antoine and Helen show that it can all dramatically and irrevocably change and fall apart in a searing flash of red light. Mike Leonard September 05.

The less you know the better

[=G= · 8/10 · 7 May 2005]

"Red Lights", a subtitled French film, spends it's 1.75 hour run following Antoine (Darroussin) and his wife Hélène (Bouquet) as they leave Paris for a night drive to Bordeaux to pick up their kids. What should have been an ordinary road trip turns into an extraordinary series of events which will leave the couple forever changed. The less you know about these events prior to viewing the better as any hint of what happens could lead to a case of mistaken genre and spoilage. This film is a human drama which doesn't attempt to entertain with extremes but rather opts to engross with a slowly seductive tale of intrigues kept to realistic proportion. "Red Lights" relies heavily on the ability to identify with the adult married couple and the problems they encounter and, therefor, will play best with mature adult audiences. A nicely managed, methodical and very believable film which spends most of its time with Darroussin, "Red Lights" received good marks from critics and public alike and is well worth a look by mature viewers into French flicks. (B+)

About Antoine Dunan

[Mort-31 · 8/10 · 14 February 2005]

After "L'ennui", this was the second Cédric-Kahn-movie I have seen, and I found it great. Kahn proves himself a specialist on ridiculous men lacking self-confidence and absolutely inapt to retain some dignity in a modern world like this.

The thriller plot, as stated by some earlier commentators, may be a little weak, especially as regards the "man on the run" (he is obviously taken directly from the Simenon novel but his character is neither fish nor foul). But this is not what it is all about. The thriller plot is merely an excuse to give a touching and disturbing portrayal of character Antoine (and his marriage).

Let me answer to two of the "plot holes" discovered by two other commentators: Antoine's drinking does make sense; he drinks because of frustration and a minority complex for not feeling man enough in the presence of his successful wife. His drinking is a childish act of defiance, he is not a sensible grown-up, not a man (as he keeps repeating himself). And of course, he doesn't recall all these telephone numbers from his memory; as indicated with one of the first calls, he calls directory inquiries and has himself connected to the respective partner each time (remember, there is cuts between the various calls).

Red Lights is a brilliant character study concealed as a masterpiece of suspense. Darroussin gives a touching performance in his role as hero and anti-hero at the same time. He is not particularly likable but still makes us feel sorry for him.

The ending, which I am not going to reveal here, is stirring in a very subtle way because above all it raises the question how it is all going to go on.

I like stories in which weird things happen out of character logic. This is a particular successful one.

Two thirds of a good thriller

[Larry-115 · 14 September 2004]

Red Lights does not disappoint for artful cinematic tension, mining the rich resources of the French thriller -- no one can craft a thriller like the French. As the story unfolds, the viewer is driven increasingly into unease by the movie's primary conceit: the sudden unraveling of the milquetoast male lead before and then during a road trip into the country (in the throng of traffic during French vacation season) to pick up the couple's kids from camp. This ultimately has disastrous consequences for both husband and wife, despite their separating early in the story.

There are very effective touches here, unique to the French thriller. I especially liked Kahn's fearless willingness to run a protagonist straight into the ground so we can watch him grossly err and see him swerve into disaster, a risk most American directors wouldn't have the guts to take. He infuriates us and we are in total fear for him all at the same time. I also liked the way that Kahn can imbue simple sequences, like a series of phone calls, with utter tension.

What I did not like was the encroachment of pat, storytelling elements. The resolution is purely canned, and in particular there is one coincidence in the movie that is so Hollywood -- so Jerry Bruckheimer -- that it made me wince in embarrassment. It almost seems that, at the end, another director altogether stepped in to take the helm.

Red Lights is definitely worth seeing, but Kahn should have stayed the course with his somber, bold storytelling, rather than chickening out as he did. A good movie that could have easily been better.

Warmed-over Clouzot

[Carl_Tait · 7/10 · 7 September 2004]

A decent but ultimately disappointing thriller. It feels like slow-moving imitation Clouzot, with elements from Les Diaboliques ("What really happened?"), The Wages of Fear (high tension on a long drive), and Quai des Orfevres (a similar plot point I don't want to reveal here).

With tighter editing, "Feux rouges" could have been a much stronger movie. It does contain a number of memorable scenes, especially those involving the protagonist and his second passenger. Not a bad film at all, but it doesn't deserve the rave reviews it has drawn from several major critics.

7/10

we struggle to assure ourselves as to what is really happening

[christopher-underwood · 7/10 · 8 January 2007]

Opens with brilliantly shot sequences and if it then moves into more traditional French bourgeoisie territory it does it with passion and intelligence. As the narrative unfolds, involving a car drive that begins tetchy and proceeds to become really scary, we identify with the main protagonists and are as concerned as the male lead when the other disappears. A lot of the first part of the film is shot through the front screen of the car but this is so well done with the accompanying dialogue, developing tragedy and suspense we are almost on the edge of our seats. We lurch into nightmare territory and things become almost unbearable as we struggle to assure ourselves as to what is really happening. I was not as interested as the director in the relationship between the high flying wife and the husband who sees himself as her poodle and presumably this is why I found the ending simplistic and verging on the insulting, but never mind a good ride up to then!

Great French Thriller

[socrates4 · 7/10 · 8 June 2019]

RED LIGHTS makes you think it's going one way, then it does a U-turn, then goes back to where you thought it was headed, then goes somewhere else entirely. What I'm saying is, it's a wild ride!

The acting is great and the directing is great. The story is fun and keeps you guessing. Just sit back and enjoy the ride. It's fun and very realistic. Recommend.

relationship drama and thriller on the road

[dromasca · 7/10 · 20 February 2010]

The first few seconds of 'Feux Rouges' show Antoine - a mid-age Parisian insurance agent - writing a loving mail to his wife on the verge of a family vacation. The last few seconds of the movie show the couple exchanging loving smiles while driving to the South where they would pick the children from a camp to continue together the vacation. Everything goes wrong in the in-between.

'Feux Rouges' starts as a relationship drama and turns into a thriller and a wrong-turn movie. It is inspired by a novel of the Georges Simenon, and as many of Simenon's novels the characters are far from being great communicators. The lack of communication, the routine and maybe the differences in social positions make of Antoine an unhappy husband who is ready to spoil the start of the vacations by heavy drinking while on road. Much of the movie happens on the road, and the gradual tension building picking with the disappearance of the wife Helen strikes a cord of uneasiness and even claustrophobia - great achievement for a film filmed on highways and roads with the sky almost permanently on view. As in many of Simenon's novels there is a moralistic twist, and justice is made even if it is completely the result of hazard and not of the will of men. And there is a huge price to pay for this justice, which we only can guess as it happens out of the screen and story time.

Director Cedric Kahn has learned a few lessons in thrillers from the great masters, and fist of all from Hitchcock. Antoine is wonderfully played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin as the type of character that we know from the very first moment that he will get into trouble and he indeed does all to confirm this, but it is the character of Helene played by Carole Bouquet that he relates to all the time and who is his focal point of frustration, worry and love.The simplicity of the story telling, the careful gradation of tension towards horror, the low key ending which does not solve the conflict, but just postpones it beyond the duration of the screening make of this film a worth watching piece of cinema.

If you love diving into a character via roadhouse blues in France, you'll really like this movie, if not love it

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 6 October 2004]

The first thing to take note in Red Lights is that the story is not rushed: Antoine (Jean-Pierre Darrousin) is perhaps a passive-aggressive, or maybe just having a mid-life crisis. He and his wife Helene are planning for a trip to pick up the kids from summer camp. But the drive hits some things in the way- he has a beer and a whiskey before leaving; a traffic jam gets to Antoine; he drinks again at a roadside; he and his wife bicker; he drinks again; she leaves, and once he realizes he can't catch up with her, he decides to have a night with a little more drinking ahead. While he says he doesn't drink too often ("two, three times a year", he says), this night is different. Especially with a fugitive somewhere out on the loose, as the radio says.

Cedric Kahn is a skilled and trust-worthy director (via France) for a few reasons in dealing with his latest film Red Lights. He doesn't make the pace in the tenser scenes (with a couple of juicy exceptions) really quick cut like in a choppy Hollywood piece. He brings an interesting blend of visuals with the city and the roads, the cars, then as it grows darker outside, the lights outside become key. When Antoine awakes the next morning on the roadside, he's out in the country. As well, he has a great blend of music from Debusy, whom I may have heard before this film but never recognized. It's a fascinating element to add with the impending doom of the film's story. But the key thing that the director can do for a film is the right casting, and here's it's impeccable in dealing with the three leads. Jean-Pierre Darrousin is terrific at conveying the mind-set of this husband in a rocky relationship. Then in the second and third acts, despite what he's doing on the road, he keeps consistent in keeping as the film's reluctant hero. Credit should also be given to first-time actor Vincent Deniard, who is perfect at being the "quiet one you got to watch". And Carole Bouquet is a fair counterpart to a Darrosin.

Although the denouement starts to drag, for my money the film's main chunk doesn't. It would be one thing if Antoine just got drunk. But there's also a good interest in the talking points with the character, as he decides to blow his mind in the process. Red Lights is definitely an art-house film that won't please everyone (the film ends rather realistically, without the kind of extra bit American audiences might want that's more intimate here), but it's still very compelling.

Just a dream

[chandler-47 · 7/10 · 13 January 2006]

"Feux rouges" is an interesting thriller about a man searching for his wife. The plot turns when he meets a criminal and takes him up with his car on a night trip to Bordeaux. The film is thrilling until the end because you do not know what happens next. The audience is misled by some red herrings that could have been pulled out by Hitchcock. The herrings are no plot holes because the whole film is a dream. It begins with the man sitting in a bar waiting for his wife. Imagine you put this scene at the end of the movie with the man waking up out of a short sleep. It also explains the improbable happy ending and the dreamlike pictures of the night trip.

Nevertheless, it could have been a better movie. Based on a story by Georges Simeon it lacks of character building. The characters are one-sided and not very likable. Underacting is sometimes part of the film noir, unfortunately it does not work here.

Difficult Rider - Possible (Lame) Spoiler

[Coporal-Tunnel · 4/10 · 13 September 2004]

"Feux Rouges" ("Red Lights") is a small and trivial morality tale without clear morals and lacking much of a tale. It positions itself as an modern anomic road movie that aims to stuff fate, urban angst, loyalty, obligation and vice into a shake-and-bake sack, but in fact it's too weak to do much more than poke at its issues, half-heartedly and from a safe distance.

For a road movie, "Red Lights" is stingy on the wild and woolly vistas that should challenge, inspire, and tempt. It's a low budget film, fair enough, but the dark confine of the car where the bulk of the first half of the movie unfolds doesn't feel like a crucible of the nighttime world - it feels like not much is going on. We're given temptation, travail, and ultimately resolution, but they come almost at random and without force or direction. Why a one-armed man? What's with the whiskey? Do violent, deranged escaped prisoners really hang out for a few in the bar across from the train station? Are French cops really that dim? If that were you, wouldn't you have one rampaging mother-of-all-hangovers hangover the next day? For the answers to these and other questions, stay home. Better yet, go see something good.

One for the road!

[jotix100 · 10/10 · 18 September 2004]

This film, in my humble opinion, has been misunderstood by the public, judging by the comments I've heard about it.

First of all, the director Cedric Kahn is one of France's most interesting figures to come out in the last years. He knows what he is doing, and what's more, he's being naughty in the way he presents his story that makes us see it one way, but is it what we are seeing real? The adaptation by M. Kahn and Laurence Ferreira Barbosa takes the Georges Simenon story from America to France.

The most interesting thing about Antoine is that he is an ordinary man. He is married to a Helene, who is a more successful person; Helene is a lawyer who must make a lot of money, much more than Antoine. As a couple, we can't see them together at all. Antoine is a man who is not handsome. Helene, on the other hand is a beautiful woman, and we wonder what brought them together in the first place? We witness Antoine going to the bathroom where he ogles his own wife in the shower. It appears their sexual life has ended long before we meet them.

Antoine has a drinking problem. On the trip to pick up their children they encounter heavy traffic. As they take a detour from the main highway, their troubles start. We see the passing "red lights" of the different bars beckoning Antoine to stop and have another beer, or a beer with a chaser. To make things worse, they hear on the radio about the escapee from the Le Mans prison, near to where they are traveling. We see the roadblocks and the erratic way in which Antoine begins to drive.

After one pit stop, Helene disappears. She has decided to take the train and leaves him a note. Antoine goes to the station, but he is late. Thus begins what will be a long night adventure along rural, nocturnal France.

Without giving away what happens, we watch Antoine waking up. Antoine's car is in a ditch and he must fix the tire if he wants to go to get the children. This awakening seems to me, the turning point of the story. Are we sure what we saw after Helene's disappearance and what happened in the road to Antoine with a stranger really occur? Mr. Kahn is playing with us. There are a lot of clues, but as detectives, the director is asking us to stay attentive to what is really going on, or isn't.

The film belongs to Jean Pierre Darroussin. He is an actor whose own appearance makes us not care for the man we see on the screen. On the other hand, M. Darrousin knows who this Antoine is and what makes him tick. His performance is subtle, yet he carries the film in a way no one would expect from a not well known star.

Carole Bouquet is a bourgeois woman who seems to be living in the wrong marriage. In contrast with her husband, she is in control of her life; she appears, at least on the surface, not to care about Antoine, but she has stayed married for a while. We know that Helene cares for Antoine at the end of the film when the two meet at the hospital.

This film shows Cedric Kahn as a director to be reckoned with.

Well made but not very interesting story

[valadas · 6/10 · 29 May 2014]

You will follow this movie with much attention and interest in terms of images and scenes but I must confess I have found the story itself in terms of contents a bit uninteresting since the plot has some coincidences that make it somewhat unbelievable. A couple is going to fetch their children who are at a summer camp in the south west of France. They are going by car from the north. The husband is a drunkard and he not only drank a lot already before their ride starts but he also keeps stopping now and then to have a drink on bars along the road. They begin to have fierce arguments between themselves and she ends up by leaving the car on one of his stops. He is bewildered when he comes back to the car and doesn't see her. She had left a note saying she was going to catch a train. From then on a succession of appalling incidents take place making the course of events very dramatic. It's a movie that keeps you attentive and alert all the time despite the fact that the plot itself is not very interesting.

Formula picture which is a ludicrous insult to the viewer's intelligence

[robert-temple-1 · 1/10 · 26 December 2007]

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.

The Red & The Black

[Ali_John_Catterall · 7 September 2004]

Red Lights is like a bad dream you might have if you nodded off over the wheel during a long car journey, with the roar of the motorway and the crunch of tyres on gravel seeping into your subconscious. It's so ambient, it would work just as well as a radio play. En route to collecting their kids from summer camp, 'married alive' couple Antoine (Pierre-Darroussin) and Helene (Bouquet) bicker in the car, as Antoine accuses her of cramping his style. The only way this sad little man can assert himself is to pull over and slug whisky after whisky in every roadside bar. When his furious wife bails out to catch the train instead, it's the start of one of those Long Dark Nights of the Soul for both parties. 'I got sick of playing the good little doggie', Antoine tells his mysterious hitchhiker, in one of the movie's most memorable exchanges. 'You're like my doggie,' sneers his passenger. 'Always thirsty.' 'Where's your dog?' 'He's dead…' Based on the Georges Simenon novel, here's a dark little number, blackly comic, and as searing as the red neon lights that accompany each pit stop on the road to Hell.

A Nervy Thriller: Contemporary French Noir

[lawprof · 9/10 · 5 September 2004]

Director Cedric Kahn's "Red Lights" alternates between bright day and scary night. Antoine Dunand (Jean-Pierre Darrousin) is an insurance company employee who may enjoy a decent salary but he feels outclassed, and is out-earned I'm sure, by his corporate attorney spouse, Helene (Carole Bouquet). They have a nice, urban apartment and two young kids, a boy and a girl, both at camp eagerly awaiting pickup by their parents.

Antoine feels neglected by Helene, actually hated, and he even half-suspects her time with fellow male employees goes beyond business. He consoles himself with beer and scotch, preferably one after the other. He's clearly becoming, if he isn't already, an alcoholic.

The two leave to pick up their children from a distant camp. It's holiday-making time in France and the highways are jammed. An impatient Antoine, infuriated by the crawl, takes two successive detours, one off the main highway, the other for several refuelings at on-the-way bars. His driving becomes increasingly erratic, his wife's complaints more provocative. Eventually she realizes he's not just driving poorly, he's getting progressively more smashed. An argument ensues interrupting the classical music on their radio. Her anger at his driving is a coda for their growing estrangement. And then a bulletin announces a dangerous criminal has broken prison and is on the loose.

Recognizing that Antoine is really loaded and he won't yield the car keys, Helene runs off while her husband is knocking down scotch, leaving a note that she'll take a train.

Antoine is excessively upset at finding Helene missing-though befogged by booze, he also probably recognizes his own weirdness. Setting off to intercept her train he accepts a morosely quiet hitchhiker (Vincent Deniard), a fellow who offers no name but guess who he really is (hint above).

The film now enters a dark and isolated countryside where Antoine, despite his towering blood alcohol level, becomes justifiably afraid of his mostly silent young passenger.

The ride becomes a trip to terror for Antoine who sobers up enough to know he better master a deteriorating and life-threatening situation. Having done that he hunts for his wife. To tell more would be to spoil an original, well-acted story about fairly ordinary people who have let their marriage grow stale for all the usually mundane reasons that presage a relationship crisis.

The three main characters make "Red Lights," a title that superficially is about Antoine's reckless disregard of traffic signals but actually spotlights the warnings we receive and often ignore about impending personal crises, work. Largely unknown outside of French cinema, all three well-experienced and effective lead actors keep the viewer glued to the screen.

Compared to the current star vehicle hit, "Collateral," "Red Lights" carries forward true, outstanding noir drama by focusing on the straying from safe paths of ordinary people in common situations.

9/10

Movie was well acted, but plot was inconsistent

[tbaerman · 3/10 · 22 December 2004]

The actors did a good job, but the plot had too many inconsistencies to work as a thriller. Many reviewers cite the main character's need to stand up to his wife as a reason for his sudden drinking problem. He was a father with two pre-teen children, and he was going to be driving all night to pick them up from camp. The drinking doesn't make sense.

The next huge inconsistency was the main character and his killer companion breezing through a roadblock specifically set up to catch the escaped killer.

Then, the fact that the killer always keeps his right hand in his pocket is never explained, other than the main character's shouted question about the killer's arm being crippled. There needed to be some kind of payoff or explanation about that.

Finally, after the main character's wife was raped and her head smashed because of his drunken stupidity, she welcomes him back joyfully.

The story definitely didn't work. I'm amazed that I can't find one professional review that hints at that.

Unmissable, beautiful film!

[adelaide-9 · 9/10 · 12 November 2006]

This is exactly what French cinema is best at doing, a brilliant, psychological drama that absolutely makes you sit up and think. I won't spoil the plot for you, as I think everyone should take the time to watch this film, and figure it out for themselves. I will say that the acting is incredible, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Carole Bouquet provide a real tour De force as the main couple. All the incidental characters also make it stick, and the film is so artfully filmed, in fact everything combines together to make an overall brilliant picture. Perhaps needless to say, it is a very psychologically demanding film, but absolutely essential viewing. France after a slip in the 80s and early 90s has come back with vengeance in the Cinema stakes, and hopefully the rest of the world will sit up and take notice of this Cinema Revolution currently going on! Flawless and truly unmissable.

What a disappointment

[MaggieDelaney · 4/10 · 19 September 2004]

The higher the platform, the harder the fall. What can I say? As we were leaving the theatre a man sitting in front of us shook his head and said, "All that for WHAT?!" A lot of plot development that led nowhere, unnecessary red herrings, completely unbelievable dialogue (especially in interrogation scenes), and entirely unlikeable main character (although his acting was, admittedly, terrific). Watching a movie where a character gets drunker and drunker then proceeds to risk other peoples' lives by insisting on driving made me so angry I had trouble focusing on the weak plot. I wasn't the only one who disliked the film, as the entire crowd leaving the art-house theatre in West LA were grumbling about what a waste of time and money this was. WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO FRENCH CINEMA?

bloody brilliant

[markgorman · 9/10 · 28 October 2004]

Plot holes galore. the scene where the "hero" makes about 15 phone calls from memory(to places he's never heard of) is a bit dim really. But it's SO engaging. This is a really, really great movie. Brilliantly directed, superbly cast (one of the best cast movies I think I've ever seen). If the Kings of Leon acted they'd be fighting for the baddie part in this movie.

Carol Bouquet is the older woman of everyone's dreams and the main man? Never seen him before. But I'm sure I will.

Forget the plot holes. This movie is utterly brilliant.

I saw it purely by chance on a rainy night in Liverpool. Proved to be a good one.

Homer goes to France

[Philby-3 · 20 October 2004]

CAUTION - Spoiler

The French seem to have a very different idea from Hollywood about what constitutes a thriller. Hollywood likes to pitch a regular sort of guy into a baffling situation over which he has no control – Denzil Washington up against shadowy State operatives, or Harrison Ford against various bad guys, for example. The pace is fast and there is tension followed by a let-up at frequent intervals. We, the audience, identify with the protagonist and cheer for him or her to succeed.

In this film there is a central character called Antoine who is stupid beyond belief – Homer Simpson is a philosopher by comparison – and who gets himself into a nasty but routine situation he could have easily avoided (if giving a lift to an escaped psychopath is routine). Then he blunders his way out of it. We sigh with relief at the end as he avoids a fate he richly deserves. Funnily enough he is almost sympathetic, for his one concern is the safety of his family – he might be thick but like Homer his heart's in the right place.

There's plenty of tension though, built up in a different way. The camera spends a lot of time on close-ups, especially on Jean-Pierre Darroussin (of Marseilles movies fame), who plays Antoine. An air of menace is generated by car radio bulletins, heavy night-time road traffic, seamy roadside dives and Antoine's increasing intake of alcohol, which reaches almost incredible proportions. Most of the time is spent on busy French roads at and we spend a lot of time waiting for the inevitable crash.

Jean-Pierre Darroussin turns in a remarkable performance. He is a sort of French everyman, an insurance company clerk married to a much more high-powered woman who is a corporate lawyer (Carole Bouquet – gorgeous as always). You wonder how they ever got together. Yet Darrousin somehow convinces us that the fate of this little man matters to her as well as to us.

The original property, apparently was a story by the prolific French writer Georges Simenon of 'Maigret' fame, and the interrogation of Antoine by an extraordinarily well-briefed police officer is straight out of a Maigret episode. I would think the story has been updated a bit (career woman attorneys were pretty unusual in Maigret's day). I can't really think that the police would assume so readily that Antoine was not guilty of any crime – police officers are known more for their pedantry than imagination- but at least it helps the plot towards resolution.

You won't like this movie if you don't like French films, but it is a vivid and absorbing entertainment, albeit about someone we pity rather than admire. It has not encouraged me to any do more driving in France, even in an apparently indestructible Rover.

Irritating, insulting and out of date

[DarrenHorne · 4/10 · 21 March 2005]

The French are renowned for intellectualising cinema and identifying it as an area of artistic merit, with films such as À Bout de Soufflé, Belle de Jour, and more recently the enchanting Amelie, providing examples of the pinnacle of film making. Expectations can be high, as they were with Feux Rouges, and it can be easy to be disappointed.

The narrative follows a married couple's journey to pick up their two children from summer camp. Helene (Carole Bouquet) is beautiful and intelligent and is a hit at the law firm where she works, but her husband Antoine (Jean Pierre Darroussin) is less successful and attractive, leaving him with feelings of impotency which he deals with by drinking.

This offering from our Gallic neighbours has left me with a desire to sign the petition to fill in the channel tunnel immediately. I have been violently offended by this film. I consider myself a modern man, unthreatened by powerful women, I have a willingness to talk about my emotions, I even shed a tear at the end of Titanic. But when confronted with a drink driving caveman that harbours a desire to beat his chest and reinstate some prehistoric superiority over his wife, I can only be insulted

The insult is not the fault of the cast; Darroussin's enchanting performance is particularly impressive, perfectly portraying the levels of inebriation, at times humorous, always pitiful. It is not his drinking that annoys, as Dudley Moores Arthur and Richard E Grants Withinail show, drunks can be hilarious. It is the response of those around the drunk that are both bewildering and frustrating. Bars next to the motorway continue to serve the drunken Antoine, and he coasts through a police roadblock with ease.

The night time cinematography is surreal and beautiful, perfectly expressing the hypnotic quality of road markings and headlights that can easily enthral the unwary driver. This is heightened by a fairy tale quality that is given to some of the nocturnal motorway encounters. The director does manage to build up tension, and the first half of the film is gripping as we search for the answers for Antoine's drinking and sympathise with his plight as he is continuously kept waiting by his wife. Their relationship is interesting at this stage, primarily because we are intrigued why Helene has settled for the unhappy and unpleasant Antoine. Unfortunately the film deteriorates quickly from then on, never knowing quite what it wants to say. The only message that does come through clearly is a rather unpleasant one regarding equality between the sexes in a contemporary world. Antoine's journey is one of discovery as he searches for his identity as a man. This is emphasised by his disregard for authority by speeding and drink driving, causing his wife to get the train. His attempts to bond with other men and his rants about brotherhood seem laughable, but also dangerous, as shown in the tense scene in which he picks up a hitchhiker. The film continues to irritate when Antoine realises that the hitchhiker is a wanted killer, but looks up to him because he is a "real man" and does not bow down to anyone. By allowing Antoine to kill this murderer in self defence the audience is told that it is in combat that men become real men, in this case Antoine regains his masculine power. He becomes the warrior.

Helene is still strong though, and in order to put her "back in her place" and to restore Antoine's masculinity fully, Helene has to be stripped of her power by the last weapon of degradation that man has against woman. The rape revelation allows Antoine to return to his shattered and broken spouse and be a pillar of strength, taking his "rightful" place as master of the household and removing any guilt he would feel at taking another mans life, as he can view it as revenge for the violation of his wife.

Is this a comment on the modern man? Are we still in an age in which men are so threatened by equality that was want to revert to some archaic time where the phallus rules over all?

The cinematography is impressive in parts, the characters are believable and there are moments of genuine humour, but it is uneven, with plot holes and distracting suggestions about infidelity and conspiracy theories. As a literary adaptation it suffers from the lack of a strong captain at the helm, who also appears to have been intimidated by the source material. It lacks clarity of storytelling, and bumbles between a cinematic experience and the representation of a literary one. Feux Rouges remains an immensely irritating film that portrays a man that has no place in today's society.

A positive experience of French cinema

[ron-chow · 8/10 · 25 November 2008]

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.

don't bother

[film_ophile · 4/10 · 18 July 2004]

i originally went to see this film because it was recommended by a respected reviewer, but i have come to find out that i feel the opposite about the film. i am particularly demanding of 'thrillers'; they must be logical and realistic and the story must make sense and 'hold water'; all in order for me to impart my trust to the director, sit back and be taken in, or buy into, the film experience. if you share these requirements, do not bother to see this film. the plot is full of way too many holes. and we see far too little of the luminous carole bouquet. over half the film features Darroussin, the protagonist schlemiel(sp.?) in a preposterous scenario where he is a man who only has a drink 2 or 3 times a year, but, in the course of this film, drinks enough to put ray milland to sleep in a heartbeat ,all the while driving, AWAKE, long distances and managing to carry out an extremely brutal act of violence. after seeing it, i resented it and wanted to warn off potential viewers. a 4 out of 10 for me.

Stick with this one...it definitely picks up steam as the film progresses

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 19 January 2009]

I really wish this film came with a little disclaimer at the beginning that begged viewers to stick with the film and not turn it off after the first 20 or so minutes. That's because although FEUX ROUGES starts off slow and the characters seem unlikable, the film builds and builds to a wonderful crescendo--making this a film well worth seeking.

A middle-aged couple (Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Carole Bouquet) are preparing to drive from Paris to the countryside to pick up their two children at summer camp. During this portion of the film, the viewer will probably notice several things--the couple lacks warmth in their relationship, they are hard to get to know for the audience and perhaps the husband has a drinking problem. Once the trip begins, the couple snipes at each other almost constantly and it's a chore to watch them. It all gets worse when several times the husband stops the car at bars "to go to the bathroom"--and he takes a couple drinks instead. By this time, the man's driving is impaired and the wife has had enough. She tells him if he goes into one more bar that she'll take the car and continue without him--so he goes into the bar with the car keys. Well, once he returns, he finds the car empty and a note saying she's taken the train. He responds by quickly driving to the next two stops to try to catch the train but it's all in vain.

Now, at this point, the film starts to get interesting. As a type of male protest, Darroussin goes back into a bar and drinks very heavily. He tries to strike up a conversation with a huge and rather scary looking guy. He even offers to buy the guy a drink but the man just wanders off and Darroussin looks to tell someone about his emancipation from a controlling wife. As he leaves the bar, however, he is approached by the same man--who now asks for a ride. Foolishly, the husband agrees---and the film switches into high gear as the man goes for the ride of his life.

There's a lot that happens from this point on and in some ways the film seems a bit like the very chilling Dutch film, THE VANISHING ("SPOORLOOS") or a Hitchcock film. But because I don't want to spoil it, I'll say little about this. What I loved, however, about all this is that the drinking has an interesting psychological aspect, as Darroussin seems to drink to make up for his own masculine inadequacies. Through the terror that ensues, he is able in a sick way to claim back his manhood as well as get to the heart of his drinking. The only negative I have at all about the last part of the film is that there is a very, very ironic occurrence--so tough to believe and coincidental some might be a bit turned off by it. But, really, it's only a minor quibble.

Overall, a taut thriller and psychological portrait. The film is Darroussin as he is the main focus and manages to carry it very well with his characterization of a very flawed though seemingly ordinary man. I love how French films often have actors who are so ordinary looking--such as Daniel Auteiul, Michel Piccoli, Jean Rochefort and Gérard Depardieu--guys who are simply exceptional actors. Had this been made in Hollywood, instead Darroussin and Bouquet, it probably would have starred Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie or Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts-- quelle dommage!