Les Chambres Rogues | 2024 | rated R | starring Juliette Gariepy, Laurie Babin | written & directed by Pascal Plante | 1h 58m | in French with Subtitles | 4 1/2 out of 5 stars |
Kelly-Ann (Juliette Gariepy) is a model by day who becomes a freelance trial watcher when the high profile trial of a disturbing serial killer begins. Kelly-Ann meets fellow trail watcher Clementine (Laurie Babin) and the two bond over their love for true crime trials, but Clementine sees kindness behind the eyes of the accused and Kelly-Ann tries to navigate as every part of her life becomes more and more devoted to investigating the trial.
We’ve gotten a lot of Descent-int0-Madness movies lately. A lot and I like watching a character unravel as much as the next person. However, all of these movies have gone the supernatural route, using a curse or a ghost to blur the line between reality and nightmare for our protagonist. A shocking sequence of something irreversibly traumatic happening to our character cutc with a snap of them coming back to reality. It was only a hallucination. There are no hallucinations in Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms. Nobody thinks they are turning into a swan or an angel or see long dead friends. This is a movie about obsession handled in a very real, very grounded way. It’s a slow burn thriller that shows us the increased obsession of the main character by detailing the slow collapse of their entire life instead of telling us about it. From late night internet research to sleeping on the steps of the courthouse. Kelly-Ann is descending into madness all the same.
We don’t know why Kelly-Ann drops into this spiral. We aren’t given childhood flashbacks or internal monologues, so we’re never quite sure where she is in her slide until it suddenly manifests itself in a shocking way. She seems to be the saner side to friend Clementine, who becomes the proverbial woman that writes marriage proposals to serial killers in prison. Clementine doesn’t just obsess over the trial, she’s crossed over into being convinced our killer, Ludovic Chavier (the movie uses his name so often it starts to sound like a true case), is innocent and everyone else is rushing to judgement. Both Gariepy and Babin’s performances are utterly riveting and they are game to go into the unflattering depths this movie takes us. This movie doesn’t seem to know that movies aren’t supposed to depict women so self-indulgent and cruely and when they are it’s supposed to be a huge twist or because of some sort of societal oppression. Plante does not want us to sympathize with our heroes here.
Plante takes a subtly satirical side-eye at obsessed true crime fans and the lives they must lead, but the movie plays out like an ice-cold procedural. I particularly love the perfectly sterile white courtroom the action revolves around. It’s like a spaceship. The rest of the movie is for night owls, bathed in red and darkness. Frames are still, often composed around glass or reflections in windows or computer screens. A lot of slow burns lead to equally subdued endings. Red Rooms is a slow burn that actually leads to an explosion. It’s rare for me to be shocked as of late. It’s something I crave in movies. Plante takes this story about 4 or 5 steps beyond where most other thrillers of this kind would go. There is a moment that announces the third act that dropped my jaw to the floor unlike anything else I’ve seen recently – and it stayed there for the entire riveting finale of the film.
Red Rooms almost crosses over into a horror movie with how disturbing and immersive some of this is. The film revolves around a killer who kidnapped a young girl and sold her off to be tortured and killed on a dark web video. It isn’t graphically violent but delivers enough of the sounds to let our mind fill in the blanks. And it depicts a world so voyeuristic and lacking human connection that people either want to watch the video or fantasize about being in it. It’s dark stuff and it’s pulled off with immaculate precision by Plante. Red Rooms is one of the best movies of this year that few people have discovered. I absolutely f**kng loved it.