Red Lights (2004)

People commit horrendous acts in movies all the time, but the bad behavior that is most cathartic for an audience is often the common domestic kind. In the French thriller Red Lights, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, an actor of such intense, brooding mousiness that he suggests Wallace Shawn or Elisha Cook Jr. with his fuse silently blown, plays Antoine, an insurance salesman driving from Paris to Bordeaux with his cold, sexy, far more successful wife (Carole Bouquet). Their war of desperation -- she picks at him, he sneaks drinks at rest stops -- would be funny if it weren't so cutting. It's easy to see why Red Lights has become a sleeper hit: It evokes the spirit of Hitchcock and Highsmith, as Antoine undergoes an all-night odyssey that redeems his manhood, at the expense, naturally, of all good behavior.

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