Red Rooms

Red Rooms is a hard movie to review. I enjoy elements of it. In fact, I downright love many elements of it. I think it is absolutely a worthy watch for movie fans. But I'm having trouble pinning down if I love the movie itself, or just respect the hell out of it. Red Rooms is about Kelly-Anne, a model who, as the movie starts, is so interested in attending the trial of an alleged child killer, she sleeps outside to be first on line when court opens. She has no ties whatsoever to the case. Why is she interested? We don't know. As the movie unfolds, it becomes apparent she doesn't know either. The interest becomes an obsession, and starts to affect her job and her life, to the point where she wants to get involved and find some missing evidence, the recording made of the live-streamed murder of one of the girls. Red Rooms tackles a lot of ideas in its two hours: obsession, true crime media, conspiracy theories, and the distortion created viewing the world through a screen. It makes no attempt, not even an allusion, to finding an answer to anything it approaches, but it's not trying to. Director Pascal Plante wants to explore these themes by examining the effect; how media packages the reality of suffering and loss and brutality that is inherent to murder into the genre of entertainment known as "true crime", and how that can distort or desensitize us to the realities of it. It challenges the viewer by hinting at the salacious details of the kidnapping, torture, and murder of three young girls that were broadcast on the dark web, but the only time we the viewers experience the videos is seeing the reactions of other people watching it; we the audience are denied the gore and viscera. We only hear power tools and screaming, and we only see what it does to others. As much as it is a smart ploy on the part of Plante to let the imagination run wild, it's also meant as a slap in the face to people who consume true crime and lose sight that these aren't stories; real people died, often in terror and agony. It forces you to ask yourself if you really want to revel in the misery of others for entertainment, and more important, why. Red Rooms also tackles the notion of conspiracy theories and those who indulge in them. It isn't until the very end that we find out whether the accused really is the killer or not. In the meantime, we hear the opening arguments from both the prosecution and defense, and they're equally compelling. We hear snippets of testimony, and see bits of evidence. But then there's the character of Clementine, a young woman who hitchhiked from Montreal to Quebec City to attend the trial because she has developed a crush on the accused. Clementine believes he is a kindly, gentle soul, who is being framed by the real killer. Considering the nature of the dark web and how intertwined the killings were to it, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that hackers are setting him up. And when Clementine isn't going off about his innocence and the grand conspiracy, she sounds like a very normal, sweet, if perhaps naive, young woman. Clementine feels like someone we all know. She just happens to have a deeply rooted opinion on this case, and she's convinced of an elaborate web of rationales to explain away the possibility of his guilt instead of embracing the simpler, if more painful, truth. That, almost always, there is no conspiracy. We make it up because it keeps us from reconciling with an inconvenient truth. As much as the guilt or innocence of the accused is an important mystery in this movie, the central mystery is Kelly-Anne's obsession, and it is here that Red Rooms' direction really excels. There's a moment about halfway through where Clementine asks Kelly-Anne point blank why she comes to the trial. Kelly-Anne never answers, but we see her expression when being asked, and we see it's a question she hasn't asked herself ... and now that it's out there, she's discovering she doesn't have an answer. But that doesn't stop the obsession from growing and manifesting in strange ways. Is she an avenging angel, out to find the smoking gun and give the parents justice and closure? Is she a demented sycophant who just wants to torture the families of the deceased? Does she believe as Clementine does and is genuinely looking to prevent the system from holding an innocent man responsible? Is Kelly-Anne just broken and this case was what finally brought her deteriorating mental state to the surface? The direction of Red Rooms really excels here. There's just enough evidence to sway in any of these directions. Or maybe it's a mixture of more than one. Maybe the truth is that, unlike true crime media, which boils down complex stories to simple guilty-or-innocent narratives, real people are complex and often contradictory. And maybe that's what Red Rooms is trying to get you, the viewer, to consider about yourself, what you watch, and what you believe about the world and yourself. All of this would fall apart without strong performances, and Juliette Gariépy holds this all together like a human keystone. More often than not, she plays Kelly-Anne with a level of clinical detachment; not as cold and inhuman, but as inscrutable and enigmatic. Sometimes, we do see something in her, like when she's sitting at her computer screens, trying to investigate the case in her own way; there is a dogged determination in her eyes, but we never know what is driving that determination. There is a moment late in the movie where she sees something that rattles her, but we don't know how or why; does it confirm or destroy her preconceived notions? Does she feel vindication or defeat? Or is she just happy she got what she wanted? Kelly-Anne is meant to be kept at arms' length from the audience, which is a risky narrative angle for a lead character. They're supposed to be our window into this story, and instead, Kelly-Anne is a closed door. Or perhaps she's a mirror. It's hard to tell, but it's what makes the movie work, and Gariépy hits it out of the park. Red Rooms is a challenging watch. It demands your attention but offers you little in reward as far as narrative resolution. It has character and narrative arcs, but there's enough ambiguity in play to make you question whether they were satisfactory in the way you wanted them to play out. I'm not sure Red Rooms a movie one watches and loves the way one loves, say, Back To The Future or When Harry Met Sally. It has emotional moments, but the overall feeling of the movie is empty and keeps you at a distance. But it does engage you, and challenge you, and provoke you, and does so with artistry and intelligence. It doesn't talk down, but it expects you to keep up. Red Rooms is not a hard movie to recommend, but you might walk away more impressed and respectful than emotionally connected or swept away. But I think that was by design, and I respect it even more for that.