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Pascal Plante directs an unabashedly artistic film that takes viewers on a terrifying journey into mental spaces as dark as the horrors of the dark web.
ALI ALIZADEH, Fri 3 Jan 2025
The serial killer is an aesthetic phenomenon as well as a real-world menace. Ed Gein, the original American psycho, belongs as much to the horrified newspaper accounts and police reports from his own time as he does to his future reincarnations as Norman Bates, Leatherface and his most loyal cinematic impersonation, Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.
The title of the brilliant Canadian film Les chambres rouges refers to supposed, perhaps apocryphal ‘rooms’ on the dark web transmitting videos of real killings, the kind of thing that would have been called ‘snuff’ in the pre-internet age. It is a film that is, at one level, all about aestheticisation. The story is not really about the carnage committed by an alleged serial killer, Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), who spends the duration of the film inside a glass cage in front of the jury at the trial for the murders of three teenage girls in Montréal. The film instead shows us the perceptual impact of the images of these killings. We do not see the murders; but we see how these murders are seen by the film’s protagonist, Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy).
Kelly-Anne is very much the kind of character lauded by the late capitalist zeitgeist. A successful, confident, intelligent, independent young woman, a professional model, athletic, tech savvy, living an impeccably healthy life. She is also intensely lonely. Her high-rise studio apartment is the lair in which she shelters after flashy photoshoots. Alone with an AI simulation as her sole companion, she gambles online, wins big, eats alone, and exercises in the cold glow of her computer screens.
Were this not a horror film, we could expect that Kelly-Anne would soon meet another youth who would match her social status, looks and other signifiers of sexual value, and the film would turn into some kind of Québécois reboot of the 1990s romantic comedy, You’ve Got Mail. But Les chambres rouges is nothing of the sort. It is a haunting mediation on the horrors of loneliness, and a terrifying journey into mental spaces as dark as the things on the dark web.
Kelly-Anne has, after all, found her soulmate. It is none other than the muted, caged murderer. Kelly-Anne is one of the two young women who religiously attend all sessions of Chevalier’s trial. The other, a younger woman called Clémentine (Laurie Babin), is altogether more common, working-class, and is immediately drawn to the glamorous Kelly-Anne. The two forge something like a brief friendship and together face the public opprobrium aroused by their ardour for a monster. Clémentine is angered by the media’s scorn, and tries to defend herself and the accused killer, whom she believes to be innocent. Kelly-Anne, sophisticated, subtle and inscrutable, does not react.
And then, the horrors. Clémentine is shocked to discover that Kelly-Anne already owns the files of the videoed footage of two of the murders, obtained from the infamous ‘red rooms’ of the dark web. Why would this affluent individual, whose face and body adorn fashion websites, have a passion for videos of a masked man slaughtering children? Is she evil? Or is she very, very sick? We watch the two women watch the videos. Clémentine weeps. Kelly-Anne is impassive, or perhaps pensive. Or is she interested?
Les chambres rouges does not have a moral message. Nor does it derive titillation from the transgressions of aestheticised violence. For a slow and an unabashedly artistic film, it is quite suspenseful, almost a thriller, but the question of Chevalier’s guilt is not what drives the plot. The dark web is at the heart of his gloomy devotee’s subjectivity. Kelly-Anne, the woman who has it all, has nothing but the shameful, melancholic desire to be touched by the horror of the gruesome footage. Do we despise her, pity her, or see in her character – masterfully played by Gariépy – a truthful depiction of contemporary nihilism?
Review: Les Chambres Rogues (Red Rooms)
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