Trouble Every Day (2002)
There's been a surprising amount of great recent horror titles directed by women. (Two that spring instantly to mind are Antonia Bird's Ravenous and Mary Harron's scaborously funny American Psycho.) Nothing in lyrical French auteur Clair Denis's filmography suggested that she was ready to get in touch with her inner gorehound... but hot damn, she's done that in a big way here. Denis is a visual filmmaker who tries to use as little dialogue as possible to get her ideas across (anyone who saw Beau Travail can attest to that), and the two most effective segments of this film have zero dialogue in them and, in fact, not much in the way of sound at all. Not much, that is, except for the groans and screams being loosed from the throats of those unfortunate to cross paths with our main characters (vampiric cannibals played in separate but parallel plotlines by Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle) and some incredibly brutal sound FX. These two hideously gripping setpieces are worth the price of admission alone, if you can stomach it. Even if you can't, Denis has set up her film in a wickedly effective manner -- she slams the first scene on us after we've already been in our seats for an hour and have acclimated ourselves to her languid pacing, and sticks in the second (the one most likely to provoke walkouts) with a mere five minutes left in the film. (Not that that stopped about five people in my audience from walking out after the second scene anyway.) The bulk of the film (meaning the scenes sans blood) details Gallo's obsessive search for the doctor who has some manner of connection with his sickness -- he feels cannibalistic whenever he gets aroused, which puts a rather large crimp in the honeymoon he's supposed to be enjoying. The doctor, meanwhile, is married to the also-afflicted Dalle and has to deal with the messes she makes. It's alternately enthralling and faintly dull, held together by Denis's skillful eye for composition and a neat score by the Tindersticks. Yet, the film does have those two astonishing scenes which, once seen, make the film awfully hard to shake off. There were times when I was bored, certainly... but in its own special way, Trouble is absolutely unforgettable.
Grade: B
There's been a surprising amount of great recent horror titles directed by women. (Two that spring instantly to mind are Antonia Bird's Ravenous and Mary Harron's scaborously funny American Psycho.) Nothing in lyrical French auteur Clair Denis's filmography suggested that she was ready to get in touch with her inner gorehound... but hot damn, she's done that in a big way here. Denis is a visual filmmaker who tries to use as little dialogue as possible to get her ideas across (anyone who saw Beau Travail can attest to that), and the two most effective segments of this film have zero dialogue in them and, in fact, not much in the way of sound at all. Not much, that is, except for the groans and screams being loosed from the throats of those unfortunate to cross paths with our main characters (vampiric cannibals played in separate but parallel plotlines by Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle) and some incredibly brutal sound FX. These two hideously gripping setpieces are worth the price of admission alone, if you can stomach it. Even if you can't, Denis has set up her film in a wickedly effective manner -- she slams the first scene on us after we've already been in our seats for an hour and have acclimated ourselves to her languid pacing, and sticks in the second (the one most likely to provoke walkouts) with a mere five minutes left in the film. (Not that that stopped about five people in my audience from walking out after the second scene anyway.) The bulk of the film (meaning the scenes sans blood) details Gallo's obsessive search for the doctor who has some manner of connection with his sickness -- he feels cannibalistic whenever he gets aroused, which puts a rather large crimp in the honeymoon he's supposed to be enjoying. The doctor, meanwhile, is married to the also-afflicted Dalle and has to deal with the messes she makes. It's alternately enthralling and faintly dull, held together by Denis's skillful eye for composition and a neat score by the Tindersticks. Yet, the film does have those two astonishing scenes which, once seen, make the film awfully hard to shake off. There were times when I was bored, certainly... but in its own special way, Trouble is absolutely unforgettable.
Grade: B
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