TROUBLE EVERY DAY (1966)

Claire Denis named her film TROUBLE EVERY DAY (2001) after a 1966 Frank Zappa song of the same name. Released on the debut album FREAK OUT! by Zappa's band The Mothers of Invention, was written in 1965 as Zappa watched the Watts Riots. The riot lasted 6 days in Los Angeles, which killed 34 and injured over a thousand.  It ranked as the largest riot in Los Angeles until 1992.  The themes of racial and social injustice as well as violence pertain to Denis' body of work as a director and her experiences in colonial Africa.

TROUBLE EVERY DAY SCREENING

"... a film that is profoundly disturbing, yet hauntingly unforgettable."

-John Anderson, NEWSDAY

"Nothing Denis has made before ... could prepare us for this gory, perverted, sex-soaked riff on the cannibal genre."
-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)

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Since skin has become such a prominent feature in the films we have been studying, I thought this report on a book covered in human skin would be interesting.  The book, covered in the skin of a convicted murderer, is currently on display as part of a history exhibit in the United Kingdom. 

The book in question is an 1852 edition of THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MILTON.  The text is an example of anthropodermic bibliopegy.  Most common in the 18th and 19th centuries, the process was often used to bound medical texts.

If only Esther could have figured this process out. 

Here is the article.

BONELLO SHORT

The following is a short film Bonello did with Asia Argento, a star and director associated with the New Extreme, titled CINDY: THE DOLL IS MINE, which played at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.  The film is clearly referencing the work of Cindy Sherman, an artist associated with abject art, and the self-portraits that she is known for.  Bonello and Argento, who worked together in ON WAR (2008), problematize gender by casting Argento in a stereotypically feminine role of performer and a stereotypically masculine role of artist.  Like male and female are challenged in TIRESIA, CINDY: THE DOLL IS MINE questions femininity and masculinity in relation to the roles of performance and artistic creation and the relationship between performer and director.

TIRESIA SCREENING

"Full of powerfully emotional scenes, even if it's almost entirely untouchable -- obtuse, bewildering and almost agonisingly slow."

-Rich Cline, SHADOW ON THE WALL

"The overall intention remains inscrutable, despite the strong presence of the performers and Bonnello’s attempt to will significance into the material by holding each shot over a glacial time-span."

-TIME OUT LONDON

"Intense, intriguing, beautifully framed and intellectually challenging, TIRESIA defies easy categorisation (much like its principal character)."

-Anton Bitel, EYE FOR FILM

In a film movement linked by the connection between transgression and transcendence, Bertrand Bonnello's TIRESIA stands out as one of the New Extremes most difficult, frustrating, and rewarding works.  A film that demands you meet it more than half way as well as requires a fair knowledge of Greek mythology, TIRESIA is steeped in classical traditions as well as modernist filmmaking.  Following the imprisonment of a pre-op transsexual prostitute and her subsequent blinding and gift of prophecy, the film touches on the abject and issues of fate.  As an in-between body, on that challenges preconceived order, such as gender, Tiresia, the character, and TIRESIA, the film, are an interesting addition to transgender film.

Suggested Supplemental Screenings:  TRANSAMERICA (Duncan Tucker, 2005), HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001), ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Pedro Almodovar, 1999), XXY (Lucia Puenzo, 2007), BOYS DON'T CRY (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)

ABJECT ART

Following the publication of Julia Kristeva's POWERS OF HORROR, in which she outlines her theory or theories of abjection, numerous artists emerged experimenting it what became labeled as abject art.  It is an interesting movement that parallels a lot of the themes we are seeing and will see in this course.  In 1993 the Whitney Museum in New York created the exhibition Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, which combined numerous artists producing work in the 1980s and 1990s.  The art often denotes an interest in the body or corporeality and especially transgressions of the body and our sense of cleanliness and propriety.  Abject artists toyed with ideas of censorship and obscenity:  what is deemed inappropriate for display and discussion.  Often noted for a feminist context, a challenge to patriarchal social order, abject artists such as Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert & George, Paul McCarthy, and Carolee Schneemann, provoked audiences and changed the course of modern art. 

(Birth-Bourgeois-1994, Untitled-Sherman-1992, Cunt Scum-Gilbert & George-1977)

Assignment:  After briefly researching Abject Art, find a work that is part of the movement or you think ties in with the movement.  Simply explain why you are interested in that particular work and how it ties into some of the issues we have been discussing in class.  Due Tuesday March 1st.

The remaining films we will screen will have a noticeable preoccupation with the body and the intertwined experiences of desire and disgust.  These films stress the fragility of the body as well as our own fascination and fear of transgressing boundaries in context of violence and sexuality.  Below is a music video for the Klaxon's TWIN FLAMES, directed by Saam Farahmand, which touches on the abject through an orgy of conjoined bodies.  It is a video that is haunting, disturbing, and strangely beautiful: in essence, abject. 

MORE DE VAN

Since IN MY SKIN, De Van has worked on television projects and directed her second feature film DON'T LOOK BACK (2009).  The film marks a major development in De Van's career.  First, rather than appearing before the camera, De Van casts two highly commercial and internationally known actresses:  Monica Bellucci and Sophie Marceau.  Second, the film debuted on a massive international stage:  the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.  The film deals with many similar issues as IN MY SKIN:  identity, perception, and alienation.  De Van is currently working on a television film.

"DON'T LOOK BACK begins promisingly. Seemingly obsessed with surfaces, the camera restlessly searches for hints and clues among the fragments we see, even before we know there's a mystery."
-Peter Brunette, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

The film made it abroad through IFC's On Demand in a special section called Midnight Movies.  It is currently available on Netflix Instant Streaming.

Jeanne a writer, married, with two children - starts to see unsettling changes in her home. Her body is beginning to change. No one around her seems to notice. Her family dismisses these fears as the result of the stress of having to finish her next book, but Jeanne realizes that something far deeper, far more disturbing is taking place. A photograph at her mother's house sends her in search of a woman in Italy. Here, transformed into another woman, RosaMaria, she will discover the strange secret of her true identity.