Original Title: Les chambres rouges
Year: 2023
Country: Canada
Language: French, English
Genre: Crime, Mystery
Director/Screenwriter: Pascal Plante
Music: Dominique Plante
Cinematography: Vicnent Biron
Editor: Jonah Malak
Cast:
Juliette Gariépy
Laurie Babin
Elisabeth Locas
Natalie Tannous
Pierre Chagnon
Maxwell McCabe-Lokos
Guy Thauvette
Charlotte Aubin
Rating: 7.5/10
In Canadian filmmaker Pascal Plante’s third feature RED ROOMS, Ludovic Chevalier (McCabe-Lokos) is the prime suspect of a high-profile serial murder case in Montreal. Three underage girls are kidnapped, sexually assaulted, then brutally murdered and dismembered in the basement by a masked man, who traffics the horrendous videos of his atrocity through the Dark Web.
Such a grisly premise can effectively hinder viewership, but rest assured that Plante’s film doesn’t dwell on the macabre and sadism, nor it is a tedious courtroom procedural (the whole case is sketched in the prosecutor’s opening statement and only one litigant is put on the witness stand). In fact, RED ROOMS opts for a perspective rather intriguing. Our protagonist is Kelly-Anne (Gariépy, a modish sylph covered with an icy, inscrutable patina), a print/photo model who is obsessed with the case. She sleeps rough outside the courthouse in the night to gain priority in the line next morning to attend the trial in person. Naturally, the hovering question is: what makes her tick? Does she have any relation with the prime suspect? Is she a victim of a similar offense? Or more disturbingly, is she a die-hard groupie of a murderous psychopath, and might be turned on by the inhuman cruelty, like those pervert buyers of the torture and murder nasties?
Smartly, Plante keeps dangling audience with such possible occurrences from wire-to-wire and doesn’t settle for an easy solution. Meanwhile, he introduces a secondary character Clémentine (an elfish Babin, extraordinary with spontaneity and effusions) to demonstrate the divergence in terms of irrational obsession. Clémentine is a groupie of Ludovic, spurred by an idealistic notion that any suspect should be presumed innocent before a final verdict is reached, the media-inflamed skepticism, and the befuddling attraction towards Ludovic (who looks creepy as hell and whom McCabe-Lokos embodies with a slouching posture as if he gets bored in his own trial. With no lines to enunciate and seen only sitting inside a box, McCabe-Lokos makes the most of the moment where he bares his perversity with one single gesture when Kelly-Anne is dragged away for imitating one of the victims). After all, Clémentine is a more regular groupie, when atrocious veracity replays in front of her face, she is crushed and is sensible enough to close up shop.
But for Kelly-Anne, this is not the case. She can stare at the atrocity without blinking and she has no preconception of Ludovic’s culpability. She is more interested into the crime itself, even if it will cost her career and she must splash out all her Bitcoins to win a bid of a coveted video that eventually lays the case to rest. Kelly-Anne does exhibits some psychopathic traits (her avoidant personality, solitary existence, her initial repulsion of an over-enthusiastic Clémentine), yet, however begrudging, she is still kind enough to invite a homeless Clémentine to her apartment and tries to do right by her. The baseline is that she doesn’t lose the judgment between right and wrong. Her obsession is not blind, she is not a groupie of Ludovic, but of morbidness and brutality, a type that is more radical and subversive.
By way of Kelly-Anne deepening involvement, RED ROOMS also enmeshes audience into the “gazing into the abyss” process, prompting audience to question their own views on the dark, beyond-the-pale matters. Although RED ROOMS cannot convincingly rationalize Kelly-Anne’s head space, it, at the very least, propounds an instructive assumption that not every obsession is pernicious, Kelly-Anne could become a quite intuitive amateur sleuth if she needs a new vocation. Fairly speaking, RED ROOMS makes for a fascinating viewing and kudos to Plante’s politic consideration and craft, including the mock cryptocurrency transactions and dark-net interfaces that put verisimilitude into close inspection.
referential entries: Xavier Dolan’s TOM AT THE FARM (2013, 8.1/10); David Cronenberg’s CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022, 5.9/10).
Cinema Omnivore 