“Described as a cine-poem about death, Le Rouge de Chine... is a quite stunning movie. Shot for the most part in ultra-bleached-out black and white photography (luckily with pink subtitles) it is a non-narrative work in the line of Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana. The remarkable thing is that while Herzog's film relied heavily on its soundtrack, Chinese Red is largely free of commentary or music, weaving its hypnotic spell through its haunting images and precise montage. Virtually the only words in the film are those of Antonin Artaud recorded from a forties radio broadcast, and the music - largely Satie and Debussy - is rarely intrusive. The film's reference points are Feuillade and Murnau - a film then of vampires but a film which manages to be optimistic about death. Chinese Red was shot in (Normandy and Scotland) and is also strangely erotic without being explicitly sexual.”
Le Rouge de Chine is dedicated to Henri Langlois, late director of the Cinematheque Française.