"... a film that is profoundly disturbing, yet hauntingly unforgettable."-John Anderson, NEWSDAY
-V.A. Musetto, NEW YORK POST
"Purposefully shocking in its eroticized gore, if unintentionally dull in its lack of poetic frissons."
-J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE
"A hysterical yet humorless disquisition on the thin line between sucking face and literally sucking face."
-Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Emphasizing mood over narrative TROUBLE EVERY DAY is an erotic modern-day horror story about a man and woman separated by thousands of miles, yet united by an insatiable taste for human flesh. An American couple honeymooning in Paris shifts to a horror story when the groom is unable to control his libido for sex and violence. He has come to Paris in search of an elusive doctor studying his particular ailment, which coincidentally afflicts the doctor's own wife. Divided between his pure bride and the doctor's carnivorous wife, the man's impulses turn to a disturbing sexual violence. An abstract horror film with a mysterious illness, a mad scientist, and cannibals, TROUBLE EVERY DAY eschews traditional narrative and either reinvents or destroys the horror genre in the process.
Suggested Supplemental Screenings: WHITE MATERIAL (Denis, 2009), BETTY BLUE (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986), NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (George Romero, 1968)
Honestly, this film lulled me to sleep during the first half. Maybe it's because I am running awake 24 hours straight now, working wokrin wokrni. All day All Night. However, when I did wake up, it was somewhat interesting. I must have missed the main details about this mysterious illness, characters, et cetera, but I saw enough to know that I dont want to meet that doctors wife, who sort of resembled Prince. She was kind of sexy in a horrible way. And why didn't the blonde kid help his screaming friend? How do these people let this happen? The locker room scene brings a new meaning to eating pussy.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I did not like the film. I thought the plot, which developed very slowly, was also very vague and unclear at times. During the few scenes when either the husband or the wife would eat an unsuspecting victim, the victims hardly even fought back and seemed to accept their fate immediately. It didn't really seem like it fit in the horror genre because there was nothing to be afraid of per se. For me it was more of a bizarre story that failed to maintain my interest. When I think of a traditional cannibal, I picture someone eating a person as if it were a meal, and they would kill the person first, followed by cooking them or preparing them to be eaten in some way, but in the film the characters got more enjoyment out of biting living people rather than actually ingesting them. This made the cannibalism element very confusing and unclear for me. I had no idea what motive the husband and wife had for eating other people, whether it was a disease or whether they just had a strange violence fetish. The actual shot framing was very good, but the story was told very ineffectively. There was also no resolution or progress made by any of the characters, and the film ends in the same spot that it started, the husband is still a cannibal, and nothing is resolved between him and his wife. The concept was interesting but needed a lot more development.
ReplyDeleteThis film decided to tell your classic cannibal/zombie/disease film, but did it in a way unique to all others. Most films of this genre usually don't focus on the why everything is happening and instead spend most screen time showing the gruesome ramifications. This film is no exception, but they did succeed in something very different. They made the trigger of the disease sex which in return gruesomized sexual activity in this film as well as emphasizing on the feeling of urge. The main character attempts to fight his urge with several medications. However, in the end he only regains clarity after he gives into his urge by having sex and eating a woman.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I liked about this film is the ending did provide some closure. Even though I didn't enjoy all moments of this film, I did like this one over some of the recent ones we have watched. I believe this because just like the infected characters who got satisfaction from their urge the director allowed the audience this same satisfaction. He did this by having the characters develop and come to some sort of temporary conclusion in the final minutes of the film. This has been an element that has been leaving me a little disappointed at the end of watching these films.
Usually I enjoy slow-paced films, but I found the pace of this one a cause of frustration; the question of the connection between the two plots made me impatient and took away from the opportunity of visual appreciation. The film failed to create a basis for dialogue; compared to the other films which often contributed to discussion of society/ethics/psychology, this one fell somewhat short.
ReplyDeleteI don't think was my least favorite film we've viewed so far, but it also was in no way my favorite. The pacing of the beginning did little to draw me in, and I still don't know if I drifted off for a few minutes of those no-dialogue shots, or if I just became so disengaged that my mind went elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to like it, if only because Vicent Gallo is the man (yes, in an ironic way, but isn't that the fun of it?). However, I felt like a lot of the movie was just really pretentious, which in my opinion is the unfortunate mark of a female director. I know we've watched female directed films already, but this one seems like it's trying to hard to compete with others in the genre rather than just telling a story that she wanted to tell.
I don't really have an issue with the backstory not being fully fleshed out; it was more the dialogue and the shot composition. Yes, some shots looked really nice and her sfx artist knew how to make a lot of blood, but very little actually contributed to the story line. Especially that jet stream of semen, which I know we've already talked about, but really, why was that necessary?
Overall, I either wanted more gore for gore's sake, or a fully realized story; I don't demand both. But if a film is going to pretentious, I want real fire and more hunks of flesh.
I'm not sure what to make of Claire Denis's TROUBLE EVERY DAY. I have seen some of her previous work, and I thought many aspects of this film are strangely in tune with other techniques she has used in her previous films, such as the way she brings viewers closer and closer to a character and distills within the viewer a strong sense of discomfort. I think what Denis really wants out of this film is for viewers to take in the sparse and elliptical information she provides us with, and then build a story from it ourselves, and while I was not aggravated by this "openness" in her storytelling, I was lost at times, unsure about what I was supposed to feel, or how I was supposed to feel. However, the lack of a clear foundation helped introduce an undercurrent of unpredictability into the narrative that kept me enticed and intrigued even despite the missing gaps. I was also interested in the thematic implications of film, as I think Denis is trying to articulate certain anxieties and fears we have towards the scientific, or towards a mixture of the scientific with the sexual, (like sexually transmitted disease); like in her other film WHITE MATERIAL, I think there is a deep reflexivity to the piece. The way in which Denis was able to erotically charge some scenes is absolutely masterful, and the way she creates a deep sense of fear and impending doom throughout her film, especially through the various silent moments, had a very strong impact on me, even if I'm not quite sure how to clearly describe that impact. And the film manages, nearly always, to be something visually beautiful to look at.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about the overall story of Trouble Every Day, it sounds like a pretty cool movie. A kinda psuedo mystery/monster/horror movie, about a scientist locking up his wife because she's turned into this vampire like sex monster. Sweet. Meanwhile, his old colleague comes to Europe with his girlfriend (wife?) to find the scientist and hopefully a cure because *GASP he has the disease too. Toss in some misguided teens trying to sneak into the house where the monster is kept and I'm totally on bored for an interesting movie. Trouble Every Day, however, had very little of that story there. The complete lack of narrative structure just seemed too much to keep me interested in an otherwise interesting story. It seemed like Claire Denis just wanted to do something different to the horror genre, but it felt completely off base to me. It just couldn't keep me interested. Not knowing any of the characters names, and struggling to understand a what was going on through a majority of the film made it more frustrating than exciting or entertaining. It took forever for anyone to even say anything! While I now see that you CAN do that in a film, you probably shouldn't. I feel like the gore in the film wasn't overly graphic for what's become the norm in the horror genre. It just felt like gore for the sake of gore, which I don't really have a problem with. But when you show a jet of semen similar to that of a fire hose, well my friend I believe you crossed the line. That one seen in particular just seemed like a little much, and completely unnecessary to storytelling that wasn't going on in the first place. Though I am fascinated what these filmmakers are willing to try in terms of what you can do in a film, I feel like a lot of it doesn't work haha.
ReplyDeleteThis film was so boring and I fell asleep several times, it failed to keep me entertained and the story line was hard to follow. I think this may be due to the lack of narrative structure. The gore was a bit much, more than what we have seen lately and personally, I think it was not needed. I don't feel uncomfortable by a lot of blood but I mean there was no need for some of the scenes to go that far. Overall, this was one of my least favorite films so far.
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