| Trouble Every Day (France, 2001) may not be the only film to find a connection between cannibalism and sexual desire, but its conflation of sensuality and viscerally upsetting horror is unique enough to distinguish it from most others.
French director Claire Denis has long been admired for her ability to eroticize the human figure on celluloid, an almost sculptural talent that was put to particularly effective use in her previous film Beau Travail (France, 1999). That film warned of the danger of complete sacrifice to an ideal, no matter how seductive the prospect of total submission, but Trouble Every Day inverts that theme, giving it considerably more intimate dimensions. Disturbingly enough, the film explores the literal extremes of what it might be like to wholly consume another person, whether sexually, psychologically or – in the film’s most obvious terms – carnivorously.
We never fully learn the specifics of the affliction that compels Coré (Béatrice Dalle) and Shane (Vincent Gallo) to consume the flesh and blood of their lovers, in flagrante delicto. Suffice to say that the scenario, by Denis and co-screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau, is less concerned with causes than it is with effects. And the effects are as horrifically twisted a vision of sexual malaise as I have ever seen onscreen.
Part of what makes Trouble Every Day so difficult to watch is that it initially normalizes the monstrosity of its characters’ desires, showing the delectability of flesh in all its soft, supple permutations. When Denis wants to fetishize a certain body part – whether it’s Dalle’s mouth or Gallo’s shoulders – she and cinematographer Agnès Godard establish just the proper distance to make the skin look as tactile as two dimensions will allow. For example, gamine Tricia Vessey, in her role as Shane’s newlywed wife June, appears particularly scrumptious in this film, allowing us to feel the sheer torment of Shane’s condition – he’s thoroughly aroused by her (who wouldn’t be?) but is also worried that if he indulges his lust he will destroy her in the process.
As Shane slips further and further away from matrimonial bliss, Coré suffers an equal torment, we see her letting out feral howls as she chews the lips off one of her victims and caresses him gently at the same time. These scenes are as bold as one would expect from Denis, who explores the tenuous line between pain and pleasure with flagrant disregard for the more genteel members of her audience. I couldn’t turn my eyes away from these images, but I didn’t want to look at them, either – a sensation I experience only rarely (the last time was while watching Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible).
Still, the film’s value does not just come from its capacity to shock. In the relationship between June and Shane, we see a commentary on the layers of duplicity, betrayal and wilful ignorance that sustain their happily married personae. When June notices, then ignores, a small drop of blood on the shower curtain after Shane has disposed of a mousy hotel maid, it suggests that she is willing to know only so much about his illness. Even in the most intimate relationships, Denis suggests, people don’t really want to know everything about one another.
Trouble Every Day also contains various observations about the tenuous line between pleasure and pain. Submission and domination, being complementary halves of a complex whole, are exaggerated almost beyond recognition when the trust necessary to such relationships is violated in such an extreme manner. For me, the film’s true value lies in this exaggeration, and the troubling, everyday ramifications of what it suggests about the place of power in contemporary heterosexual relationships. Trouble Every Day may be a horror film of sorts, but its horror derives not just from the bodily deformations of various hapless victims – it also comes from inside and between us. And that is terrifying.
Neither for the faint of heart nor the weak of stomach, the film has, not surprisingly, seen little distribution anywhere. In Canada, it’s even been hard to find on DVD, though it can be imported from various sources. The Chinese import from Panorama Entertainment offers a multi-region disc that contains English subtitles, but apparently there is also a very good French edition with commentary by Denis. |
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