Review of Red Lights (2004) by Joseph M — 27 Oct 2004

I saw Red Lights about two weeks ago and have finally gotten around to writing a few words about it.

James Berardinelli is right: This is the type of movie that Miramax would have been falling all over themselves to pick up ten years ago. Now, since they've sunk all their money into movies like Cold Mountain, really good but offbeat films like this are passed up by them.

But Wellspring picked it up, so that's a plus. Red Lights is unique; it's made in the mold of a suspense film but doesn't play out that way. Its real genre is more of a marriage-in-crisis drama, but we don't pick up on that immediately because Red Lights is so slow in revealing its hand.

In that way it is a lot like George Sluizier's 1988 film The Vanishing, and while Red Lights is not superior to the Sluizier film, it still has a lot going for it on its own merits.

Jean-Pierre Darrousin plays Antoine Dunan; he and his wife Helene (Carole Bouquet) are traveling to pick up their children from a summer camp. Antoine and Helene have an argument during their journey, in response to which Antoine stops for many drinks, becoming more and more inebriated.

During one of those stops, Helene leaves a note in the car indicating she's leaving him to his own device and taking the train. Meanwhile, Antoine picks up a hitchhiker, who may be an escaped convict that the news radio stations report on early in the film.

That's about all I want to say; the entire crux of the story rests on a few plot twists that are rather extreme (some would say contrivances), but I like to keep in mind that Alfred Hitchcock also rested his entire films on sometimes improbable plot twists. It's called suspension of disbelief.

I liked Red Lights; it was a good way to pass two hours. While it's not as mind-blowing as other foreign films I've seen in the past few years like City Of God, Carandiru, or Sex And Lucia, it's still good cinema.

And that's my two cents.