French language courtroom dramas are having a real moment recently, with 2022 seeing Mati Diop’s masterfully haunting spiritual enigma Saint Omer, then in 2023 we got almost the polar opposite with Justine Triet’s Oscar and Palme D’or-winning marital drama murder-mystery blockbuster (or at least it felt like that in its moment), Anatomy of a Fall. This year we have a worthy successor to the throne in Red Rooms (Les Chambres Rouges) – a Canadian effort from writer and director Pascal Plante. The criminal case at the centre of the film concerns the grisly murders of three teenage schoolgirls – all of whom were livestreamed being tortured and killed to online “red rooms” for paying audiences to watch. The accused, Ludovic Chevalier, never speaks in this story though, instead we follow Kelly-Anne, a supermodel by day and online gambler by night, who leaves her expensive and exquisitely clean apartment every night to sleep in an alleyway right next to the courthouse – just so she can be first in line to watch the hearing.
The core mystery of this film isn’t whether Ludovic Chevalier killed and mutilated the girls or not, but why Kelly-Anne is so unreasonably obsessed with this case. She’s an adept hacker, effortlessly gleaning invasive information on Chevalier and the victim’s families, but she herself seems to have little to no relation to this case. Early on she meets Clementine, played by Laurie Babin in a performance that fluctuates between chaotic desperation and tragic sympathy. She’s another woman who’s fixated on the proceedings, and is a fervent supporter of Chevalier – defending him to the hilt to local news and to anyone else who will listen. The victim’s clothes were found covered in blood and buried in his garden: “Maybe she got her period and buried her clothes?” replies Clementine. What about her torn out braces, still with her jaw attached? “Well I hated my braces when I was younger, it’s not impossible”; clearly Clementine is completely delusional in her adoration of Chevalier, and what is her connection to him?Absolutely nothing, and she’s not even from Quebec, having hitchhiked hundreds of miles to attend the trial.
Clementine is one end of the spectrum when it comes to the bizarre, zealous phenomenon of death-row groupies, but Kelly-Anne holds her cards far closer to her chest. Juliette Gariépy giving one of the most engaging and mystifying performances of the year; she’s off-kilter and duplicitous in all of her actions and responses, never once responding to any given situation in the way you’d immediately expect her to. Kelly-Anne’s a defiantly contemporary anti-hero, but her archetype firmly places her as a Lady of Shalott figure – a classic literary character that’s referenced by her desktop wallpaper and username. She’s a beautiful but lonely woman, living in a tower and watching the world filtered through a screen, whether that be a mirror or her computer. There’s something forbidden that she feels compelled to see, even though it’s cursed and will almost certainly destroy her life, and it’s this perverted tension that drives Kelly-Anne to some truly unthinkable places. As a result, Pascal Plante has created an unsympathetic but utterly gripping character study for the ages – one deeply entrenched in the modern world, and that Gariépy inhabits with total conviction.
Plante’s unshowy but expertly measured extensions into possibly true, possibly surreal territory put this in league with the transcendental heights of Saint Omer.
It’s hard not to think of Todd Field’s instant classic TÁR as both are films that are subjectively tied to unpredictable, often detestable, but perversely fascinating women whose thought processes are unreadable, yet we’re enveloped in their psychology. This extends to Vincent Biron’s cinematography, which shares the same ghostly perspective-driven motivation of TÁR’s camera while also harking back to the observational style of Michael Haneke, but where Haneke is detached and cold, Red Rooms is intensely probing – right down to the isolated use of colour. The few moments where the titular red appears deserve a place in the history books next to Don’t Look Now for how to use it properly in a film, and with the very rare 1.50:1 aspect ratio (the standard frame for 35mm still photography), Biron’s camera is perfectly married to this story. Even elongated scenes of Kelly-Anne tapping away at her computer are utterly electric thanks to the eerie sound design, all of which are indicative of how singular this film’s vision is. There are a handful of devastating close-ups that took my breath away, and provided me with some of the most powerful scenes of the year so far.
Plante’s unshowy but expertly measured extensions into possibly true, possibly surreal territory put this in league with the transcendental heights of Saint Omer. Red Rooms explores the demand and entitlement for sheer information in the digital age, the feeling of being owed the truth when it comes to true crime. Because sheer factual information is so readily available today, but when the truth of something isn’t known, what does that do to an obsessive person, someone who is terminally online and able to gather information at an inhuman rate, who wants that truth? Plante goes deep down that rabbit hole to some shocking places, right up to the film’s ghostly conclusion that pushes this into the realm of celestial cinema. Red Rooms isn’t a film that does easy answers, it instead rewards your engagement and takes us on an ugly, absorbing journey that, like the greatest of crime films, interrogates the philosophical consequences and cosmic implications of unthinkable acts of cruelty.
Red Rooms is in Selected Cinemas from Friday via Vertigo Films
