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Red Lights (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:84
Fresh:70
Rotten:14
Average Rating:7.1/10
Consensus: Red Lights is a taut, character-driven thriller, set against the debris-strewn battleground of a failing marriage.
Runtime: 1 hr 46 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
US Box Office: $515,992
Synopsis: Starring French cinema legends Carole Bouquet (THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE) and Jean-Pierre Darroussin (UN AIR DE FAMILLE), director Cedric Kahn's thriller, based on a novel by Georges Simenon,... Starring French cinema legends Carole Bouquet (THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE) and Jean-Pierre Darroussin (UN AIR DE FAMILLE), director Cedric Kahn's thriller, based on a novel by Georges Simenon, features dry humor and Hitchcockian suspense. The relationship between Antoine (Darroussin) and Helene (Bouquet) is deteriorating. Helene spends more time at work, Antoine drinks, and the two act like mere acquaintances, not lovers. When Antoine stops at a bar and Helene threatens to continue without him, a fight erupts between them. Angry and drunk, Antoine insists on staying in the bar, but when he emerges he finds the car empty, save for a note saying that Helene has left for the train. In a drunken stupor, Antoine attempts to follow his wife's trail, joined by a mysterious and dangerous hitchhiker, without realizing that the obvious way to find her has been in front of him the entire time. Bouquet and Darroussin play off each other beautifully. Darroussin convincingly plays a man who has lost himself. And Bouquet is strong as a wife who has placed her husband at the bottom of her priority list. That a tragedy is the one thing that can help them repair their fractured marriage feels palpably realistic. At its heart, RED LIGHTS is an exploration of intimacy, love, and what it takes to build a successful relationship, but the film also provides satisfying humorous chills and nice dose of suspense. [More]
Starring: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet, Vincent Deniard, Carline Paul
Starring: Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Carole Bouquet, Vincent Deniard, Carline Paul, Jean-Pierre Gos
Director: Cedric Kahn
Director: Cedric Kahn
Screenwriter: Cedric Kahn, Laurence Ferreira-Barbosa, Gilles Marchand
Story: Georges Simenon
Studio: Wellspring
Reviews for Red Lights
It’s a gripping and powerful film that intrigues by the confluence of the mundane with the extraordinary.
A compelling addition to the long tradition of artful French film adaptations of works of mystery and suspense literature.
A peculiar and occasionally engaging thriller that unfortunately lacks thrills.
Everything that ensues is exactly what we expect to ensue, doled out with a fastidiousness that places too high a priority on verisimilitude and not enough on, y'know, entertainment.
Puts a tense, deteriorating marriage on a highway-bound collision course with a killer.
An exercise in intrigue and tension, and the slow, constant build-up of dread has a certain Hitchcock flair.
Before it turns into a thriller, and goes badly awry, Red Lights paints a devastating little portrait of a marriage on the rocks.
Kahn's amazing ability to sustain a mood of impending dread makes this film a boderline classic.
Contentious sparks fly off the screen, for Kahn has chosen the most vicious of battlefields for his dramatic grid - an unhappy marriage.
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