Tense French road trip hints of Hitchcock

The road trip gone sour, the drive that metastasizes into a nightmare of wrong turns and screaming fits - it's nothing but fun behind the wheel in Cédric Kahn's delightfully creepy suspenser, Red Lights.

Based on a Georges Simenon novel and starring the beautiful Carole Bouquet and the nebbishy, intense Jean-Pierre Darroussin as a couple fetching their kids from summer camp, the film is a slow-burning study in frayed nerves, fractured relationships, and rearview mirror dread.

Antoine (Darroussin) is an insurance agent with a drinking problem and a chip on his shoulder - his wife makes more money, and has done better career-wise. Hélène (Bouquet) is a corporate lawyer, armed with a cell phone and a disapproving scowl. Their relationship is caked and crusted with disappointment and reproval.

It's a holiday weekend in France, and the citizenry of Paris is heading for the countryside en masse. And guess who gets stuck in the middle of it?

Just to make things a tad more tense, there's an escaped convict, a murderer, on the loose. Some of the traffic jams are due to roadblocks set up by the police.

Nicely unhurried at the outset, Red Lights picks up speed when Antoine, fed up with the bumper-to-bumper congestion, swerves onto a side road, and scampers into a bar, ostensibly to use the toilet. Another stop, and another quick drink later, he returns from the saloon to discover that his wife is no longer in the car. Panic sets in, setting off a furious chase to the railway station, where he believes Hélène has gone to catch a train to Bordeaux. A man (Vincent Deniard) appears from the shadows and demands a ride. Whom might he be?

Like vintage Hitchcock, Red Lights examines the fears and foibles of people caught up in unpleasant, and often ominous, situations. And, like Hitchcock, Kahn uses dry humor and keen observation of human character (and character flaws) to spin a compelling brand of menace.

Onetime Chanel model Bouquet is perfectly cast as the trouble-plagued spouse, but the film belongs to Darroussin, whose fitful paranoia and despair come wrapped up in a sweaty ball of middle-aged flesh.

Flesh in dire need of a drink, at that.

Contact movie critic Steven Rea

at 215-854-5629 or srea@phillynews.com.

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Red Lights

*** (out of four stars)

Produced by Patrick Godeau, directed by Cédric Kahn, written by Kahn and Laurence Ferreira-Barbosa, photography by Patrick Blossier, music by Claude Debussy, distributed by Wellspring Media. In French with English subtitles.

Running time: 1 hour, 46 mins.

Antoine. . . Jean-Pierre Darroussin

Hélène. . . Carole Bouquet

Man on the Run. . . Vincent Deniard

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (profanity, violence, adult themes)

Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse and Ritz Sixteen/NJ