The simmering tension between an ordinary married couple gets an extraordinary workout in Cédric Kahn's white-knuckle thriller Red Lights, a peerless genre exercise that manifests their feelings into rapidly escalating horror. Played against the soothing swells of Claude Debussy, the one-night odyssey gathers all the bad energy between browbeaten schlub Jean-Pierre Darroussin and his self-possessed wife Carole Bouquet, then issues a sort of cosmic payback. The suspense comes from the inside out, as discreetly contained feelings blast to the surface, conjuring a nightmarish scenario.
In the tradition of Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, Claire Denis' Friday Night, and the closing reel of Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl, an endless traffic snarl takes on a malevolent life of its own, instigating events that careen out of control. En route from Paris to Bordeaux, where they're scheduled to pick up their kids from summer camp the next morning, Darroussin and Bouquet whip up a full-blown marital crisis out of petty annoyances. For the sour Darroussin, who resents his more centered and successful wife, the vacation begins with a couple of drinks—and he just gets thirstier from there, stopping regularly for double scotches along the way. When Bouquet grows tired of his drunken hostility, she splits off and takes the train to Bordeaux while Darroussin hooks up with on-the-lam hitchhiker Vincent Deniard.
A clear-thinking man wouldn't make the awful decisions that lead Darroussin to danger in Red Lights, but Kahn ties his recklessness to identifiable feelings of inferiority and diminished masculinity. Under normal circumstances, picking up a fugitive makes about as much sense as a slasher-movie heroine backing into a darkened room. But Darroussin's pathetic desire to connect with an outlaw and taste real freedom seems plausible, even as it leads him headlong into disaster. With ruthless efficiency and wit, Kahn ratchets up unbearable tension and releases it in startlingly visceral fashion, but his placid denouement is the most chilling scene of all. Though he handles the genre elements effortlessly, the characters dictate the action more than any obligatory thriller mechanics, because they're the primary contributors to their own dreadful reckoning. At heart, Red Lights is a powerful film about marriage and the dark detours that await once its participants skip off the highway.