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Trouble Every Day (2001)

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From Time Out Film Guide

Shot and edited with Denis' customary expertise, but disappointing for both its (admittedly ambitious) script and its performances, this is rather too elliptical and enigmatic for its own good. It tells of two individuals consumed by cannibalistic bloodlust, but cared for by loved ones: Dalle, who keeps breaking out of the house in which disenchanted boffin Descas keeps her locked up; and Gallo, honeymooning with Vessey in Paris in the hope that he may make contact with Descas (or should that be Dalle?). Do the killers thirst for blood because they're victims of medical experiments, or are the experiments carried out to cure such impulses? Who knows or even, given Gallo and Dalle's hollow performances, cares. The murders are nasty, the play with genre tradition uneasy, and certain scenes (Descas wandering cool as a cucumber into a blazing house) laughably implausible.

Author: GA

Time Out Film Guide

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Godfrey Hamilton said...

Posted on Aug 06 2009 20:50 I knew something was amiss when I saw this back in 2001 in Los Angeles; not submitted to the MPAA for rating, it was screened as 'unrated', but a large sign slapped up at the box office read: 'Contains scenes of graphic sexual violence ./ no-one under 18 admitted / NO REFUNDS'. It was that last minatory note that alerted me to the aggrieved-walkout potential of the film - and indeed this audience member wanted to leave the cinema not because of disgust or revulsion with the subject matter or its presentation, but because it was just so damnably BAD. But I'd paid, I stayed. Claire Denis, whose 'Beau Travail' is one of the finest films of the last 20 years, really fucked up with this one, and the tres misguidedly uber-hip casting of Dalle and Gallo did nothing to enhance the work. Dreadful, seriously, truly dreadful.

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