A garish exercise in empty style that links together eroticism and torture in a barely coherent plot, filmmakers Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud's Red Nights centers on several characters who are fighting over an antique box—or, more accurately, what it contains: a jade skull filled with a poison that paralyzes its victim while exponentially increasing his sensory experiences. This is the invention, we're informed in periodic excerpts from a Chinese opera, of an executioner to a Chinese emperor who eventually used it on himself. The box is stolen by statuesque (and murderous) French blonde Catherine (Frédérique Bel), who intends to sell it, but it's appropriated by Carrie (Carrie Ng), a sadistic perfumer who uses the skull to increase the pleasure she derives from torturing young women with a wide array of implements (including jade claws), chains, and pulleys. Carrie's lover is also the director-star of the opera dramatizing the skull's provenance. Meanwhile, a thuggish crime lord who also enjoys hurting people comes looking for the box with his gang of minions. The borderline nonsensical Red Nights is built from a series of oddly stilted and sometimes gruesome but visually lush scenes, which seem intended to mimic the style of Italian gialli but never quite manage to achieve the hallucinatory effect of the best of them. Not a necessary purchase. (F. Swietek)
Red Nights
Breaking Glass, 98 min., in French, English & Chinese w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $21.99, Oct. 28 Volume 30, Issue 1
Red Nights
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