Red Rooms

A young woman sleeps rough in an inner-city alleyway (despite clearly possessing the means to not have to do so) with the intent to stir early then secure herself a gallery seat for the trial of a serial murderer not only accused of killing children but of then broadcasting these crimes to some subterranean, invite-only layer of the internet. She returns day after day, sits in the same seat, boring holes through both the impassive, emotionally deactivated defendant and the grieving families actually affected by these crimes. In terms of divining any sort of meaning or rationale for the behaviour of Juliette Gariépy's Kelly-Anne, the only real clue that writer-director Pascal Plante seems to offer are the online poker games this semi-employed model returns to throughout Red Rooms. It's not just the hard currency these simulated hands facilitate, it's the basic structure of the game, and how it then informs Kelly-Anne's frequently alarming decision making: you're dealt your cards, you then propose a stake based on how likely you believe you are to win, then hold or fold depending on how the game develops. In conversation with a much more forthcoming woman, Laurie Babin's fellow court squatter Clémentine, Kelly-Anne's describes her detached approach to these should-be exciting games of chance. How she will often discontinue matches early to protect her own investment or the ways in which her deliberately cold playstyle contrasts with those who find themselves emotionally entangled and therefore more likely to make mistakes. She lets something crucial slip during these conversations though, perhaps emboldened by her proximity to another person who seems to share her own strange fascinations. This statement the only real insight into a physically fine-tuned person who sips smoothies in her wind-whistled glass house while casually committing identity fraud or cataloguing paedophilic snuff clips. Kelly-Anne doesn't just like to win you see. What she really enjoys is witnessing somebody else lose.