There are no real red rooms in Canadian director Pascal Plante’s unnerving thriller Red Rooms. Mostly a lot of white, gray, blank ones — from the bare and futuristically antiseptic courtroom where a grisly trial is taking place, to the minimalist high-rise Montreal apartment where the film’s protagonist lives, to the squash courts where she takes out her anger. The title refers to the horrific, blood-soaked dungeons where, it is alleged, the serial killer on trial — Ludovic Chevalier, also known as “the Demon of Rosemont” and played wordlessly by Maxwell McCabe-Lokos with saucer-eyed, predatory calm — mutilated his teenage victims while livestreaming the slaughter for money. We do witness distant flashes of such a room at one point, but the idea mostly looms over the film like an unseen dimension, a psychotic alternate reality beneath and beyond the eerie, empty drabness of modern life.

Plante’s interest lies not so much in the criminal or his victims but on the people obsessed with him. The film (which is now available on demand and playing in select theaters) follows Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy), a statuesque and mostly expressionless professional model who gets in line early every night to get into the small courtroom in the morning. Deep into the world of the dark web, Kelly-Anne spends much of her time playing online poker with Bitcoin and hacking into other people’s private lives — even accessing the email accounts and security codes for the grieving parents of the Demon’s victims. Kelly-Anne doesn’t show much emotion, but Plante often accompanies her scenes with wailing, operatic music that is as expressive as she is not. She also meets another serial killer groupie who could be her polar opposite in personality, Clémentine (Laurie Babin), a manic chatterbox who genuinely believes Chevalier must be innocent because his big eyes are too kind. (His eyes, by the way, are not kind — and Plante makes fine use of them in one of the film’s more striking scenes.)

There is no real bloodshed in Red Rooms, but there is a kind of spiritual savagery. Plante achieves this partly through subtraction: Confronted with a verbal accounting of the Demon’s unspeakable crimes, Kelly-Anne’s poker-faced fascination with the trial is increasingly hard to read. Is she drawn to Chevalier and his alleged acts, or repulsed by them? This is among the many questions that hang in the air for most of Red Rooms’ running time, and the unnerving mystery of Kelly-Anne’s psyche, combined with the ease with which she moves through the shady corners of the internet, present a portrait of a very modern soul — unreadable, unstable, and unsettling.

At the same time, the initially controlled direction of the film — with its long, deliberate tracking shots, and orderly spaces — suggests a character who is herself fully in control of herself and her surroundings. Kelly-Anne might be unwell, but she’s also quite cool. This contrasts sharply with the messy behavior of Clémentine, who during one of the movie’s more bravura sequences calls into a late-night talk show to try and defend Chevalier, only to reveal how unhinged she really sounds. But as Red Rooms proceeds, Kelly-Anne’s reality also begins to slip, and the film’s style becomes looser, more frantic and fragmented. So much so that we might even start to question the veracity of what we’re seeing.

Despite the (thankful) lack of gore and violence, Red Rooms feels curiously giallo-adjacent at times. The bursts of formalism, the melodramatic score, the ways in which the model-protagonist’s own profession becomes a stylistic barometer for her mental state — these are all evocative of that classic, colorful subgenre of horror. What’s missing is the tongue-in-cheek exploitative quality of giallo. Or is it? By denying us cheap thrills, and by pointedly going in the other direction, Red Rooms highlights their absence. This picture about people obsessed with criminals and their grisly crimes confronts us with the mystery of who the obsessives truly are; the questions we ask of Kelly-Anne could also be asked of all us genre fiends. The expressionless, fascinated gaze at the heart of this film is ultimately not the protagonist’s, but our own.

The literary world missed the memo: I’m supposed to be famous by now. 

But aren’t we all? 

The first ingredient for seeking fame while pursuing a fine art is a healthy ego. It is only after an artist becomes famous and successful that they can fake humility. Until then, we’re all scratching and clawing at the walls, trying to be noticed.

And stupendous talent isn’t always a prerequisite for success in the arts. Sure, there needs to be a basic awareness of craft, as well as some innate ability, but the most talented artists aren’t always the most successful or famous. 

I’m not talking about myself, of course. 

With age comes the recognition of our limitations, and there is a reason that I’m hacking out columns while drinking a beer in my basement and not working on my next novel while sipping a fine chardonnay in my chalet.

Instead, I’m talking about the musician Ike Reilly, who fronts a band called The Ike Reilly Assassination. 

In August, directors Michael O’Brien and Mike Schmeideler released a documentary film on Reilly titled “Don’t Turn Your Back on Friday Night.” The film is a refreshing reminder that not all prodigiously talented artists attain worldwide fame. 

I was first introduced to Ike Reilly in Steve Almond’s 2010 book “Rock and Roll Will Save Life.” As a fan of Reilly’s music, I had arrived late to the game. By 2010, Reilly had already released more than a half dozen albums, all except one record released on an independent label called Rock Ridge Music. 

A former gravedigger and hotel doorman, Reilly has lived his entire life in the same town north of Chicago named Libertyville, Ill.—which also happens to be Marlon Brando’s hometown. The documentary captures a lot of Reilly’s backstory, from marrying his high school sweetheart and raising a family, to his decision to give the rock n’ roll life a twirl in his 30s.

Reilly’s first album “Salesman and Racists” was supposed to set the music industry ablaze in 2001, and Universal Records offered Riley a large advance. The album was critically-acclaimed, and to this day, “Salesman and Racists” remains one of those rare albums where I won’t skip a track.

But for some reason—there is a lot of conjecture in the film, including the inability to neatly package Reilly’s music for a specific demographic—it never happened.

The documentary, however, is about far more than a promising rock star who never lived up to the hype and expectations set by the music industry. It’s about how Reilly refused to sell out and continues to create great music on his own terms, in spite of everything. It’s about how Reilly reconciled with his own demons and double-downed on his family. 

Aside from being a compelling story, “Don’t Turn Your Back on Saturday Night” also contains some dynamite tunes. If you’re not familiar with Ike Reilly’s work, this is a good place to start. Many of his relative hits (or my favorite songs)are featured in the film, including the title song, “Commie Drives a Nova,” “I Will Let You Down,” “Garbage Day” and “Born on Fire.”

Steve Almond poignantly describes Reilly’s music in his book: “[Ike Reilly] sounded like Dylan, if Dylan had been Irish instead of Jewish and never left the Midwest and had grown up listening to the Clash rather than Woody Guthrie.”  

Most of all, Ike Reilly is a storyteller and a poet, and any time you find a storyteller and a poet who also makes beautiful music, it is a gift indeed. 

So who cares if they never get really famous? To use a platitude, it is all about the art. 

White Bird, 2024.

Directed by Marc Forster.
Starring Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren, Jo Stone-Fewings, Patsy Ferran, Stuart McQuarrie, Olivia Ross, Ishai Golan, Nadine Leon Gobet, John Bubniak, Jim High, Philip Lenkowsky, James Beaumont, Teagan Stark, Priya Ghotane, Yelisey Kazakevich, Jem Matthews, Sam Talacko, Timon McLean, Selma Kaymakci, Lily Huong Mac, Adam Bakule, Anise Napoleao dos Reis, Jordan Cramond, and Laura Hudečková.

SYNOPSIS:

Struggling to fit in at his new school after being expelled for his treatment of Auggie Pullman, Julian is visited by his grandmother and is transformed by the story of her attempts to escape Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

Thankfully retitled to just White Bird rather than the initial clunky title misleading viewers into believing that this is a spinoff story to 2017’s moving Wonder (starring Owen Wilson, Julia Roberts, and Jacob Tremblay), director Marc Forster (working with screenwriter Mark Bomback and adapting the novel from R.J. Palacio, who also wrote Wonder) tells a bloated but riveting and emotionally impactful Holocaust drama/romance about being othered and the importance of kindness, wrapped up in a modern-day framing device attempting to get the point across that such positivity and niceness is something that has to be learned and instilled into others.

Julian Albans (Bryce Gheisar) has recently been transferred to a different school, yet he struggles with being nice. He dismisses a girl soliciting him to join a social justice program and is generally disinterested in making friends. After returning home, he finds his Jewish grandmother Sara (Helen Mirren) there as his parents are at a soirée. She reveals that he was expelled from the previous school and implies that he needs to change his tune. Thus begins a lengthy childhood story dating back to World War II in France, just before its Nazi occupation.

Now played by Ariella Glaser, Sara is a young girl without much to worry about, admitting that she lived and mostly spoiled life until the Nazi invasion. This also means that she never made much of an effort to stand up to her friends for bullying Julien Beaumier (Orlando Schwerdt), a young boy with polio walking on crutches. While the other boys give her cruel, backhanded remarks that her sketches are “good for a Jew,” he is nothing but polite and nice, carrying himself with dignity surrounded by misinformed and nasty rumors and insults. Once Nazi Germany begins to invade, Sara is tragically separated from her parents (forced to flee friends) and a schoolteacher desperately attempting to keep her safe, eventually winding up taken in by Julien and his parents following a suspenseful cat and mouse in some wintry woods. They hide her in a sizable barn, committed to nurturing her with whatever she needs.

It’s also here where these two teens, othered by society for different reasons, start bonding while tapping into the power of a limitless imagination as freedom. Although the CGI and special effects are rough, it is admirable that the filmmakers try to bring that fantasy to life, such as when Sara and Julien imagine exploring Paris and New York. Julien continues to express impressed feelings toward Sara’s art while her misconceptions of his disability gradually disappear until she only sees him for his bravery and generosity. Seeing how that instills more confidence in Julien is also sweet and moving.

There is also an unexpected darkness to White Bird. Granted, perhaps that should be expected considering the film is grappling with the Holocaust, but for a somewhat family-friendly story preaching kindness, this narrative does not hold back on the danger and disturbing actions of the Nazis. As a result, parts of the film are heartwrenching, reaching an unflinchingly bleak depiction of reality.

As Julian listens to this longwinded story that takes all day for Sara (the occasional interlude of them conversing is generally further shrouded in evening darkness), one is somewhat surprised he hasn’t cut off his grandmother and asked if he can go play video games yet. That’s not a knock on the narrative, but more general surprise that the kid has lasted this long hanging on every word in suspense. It’s less of a spoiler and more common sense that Julian chooses kindness by following this story of treating others with acceptance and respect, but since there is so little happening between him and grandmother Sara, it doesn’t feel fully earned. With that said, the message and intent are enough to make up for that. It also helps to have that call to action be delivered by a legend such as Helen Mirren.

Even the more overcranked melodramatic beats between young Sara and Julien work since they are grounded in character and become focal points of conversation. There isn’t a sense that White Bird is dumbing anything down for its audience or trying to protect them from harsh realities, which is also a bold move for something that also feels targeted at young children who are old and mature enough to engage with harrowing Holocaust material. The film is as long-winded as the storytime, but a cumulative emotional punch and necessary message override some of its flaws.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist