There’s something rather unsavoury about our collective fascination with true crime, and, in particular, with serial killers. The need to unpick the grisly details; the voracious appetite for atrocity podcasts and series – it all holds up a mirror to a less than flattering aspect of society.
It’s this morbid curiosity, taken to an obsessive extreme, that Canadian director Pascal Plante taps into with his chillingly accomplished third feature, Red Rooms. A stylish, unsettling blend of courtroom drama and psychological thriller with a touch of cyber-paranoia thrown in, this French-language film focuses not so much on the horrific crimes and the man on trial for them, but on a young woman whose curiosity about the case starts to consume her.
Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy, excellent) is an intriguing creature: strikingly poised and aloof, she makes a decent living as a model and through high-stakes online poker. An adept hacker, she also knows her way around the grubbier corners of the internet. She is solitary, we assume by choice; her encounters with the world are filtered through the computer screens that drench much of the film in an alienating blue colour palette. But every day, Kelly-Anne leaves her chic, impersonal apartment to sit, impassive, in the court where Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) is being tried for the murders of three teenage girls – murders that were livestreamed to paying customers on the dark web.
Kelly-Anne’s motives are complex and murky; she certainly doesn’t invite sympathy. But Plante’s measured pacing and cool, dispassionate storytelling burrow into the skin of the character. It’s not a comfortable place in which to spend time.