Trouble Every Day
Friday, April 26, 6 p.m.
$12 / $8 Speed Members
Speed Cinema, 2035 S. Third St.
www.speedmuseum.org/cinema
Body horror is an especially challenging genre, the opposite of escapism with rules that are an inverse of the superhero story. Rather than imagining an escape into power and glory through a transformed, sup’ed up body, body horror creates spaces where the viewer is forced to imagine one’s own body out of control, taken to a horrific extreme. What if, instead of fighting and defeating an external enemy, it was your own body that was betraying your conscious decisions and moral compass? What if, instead of starring in “Spiderman” you found yourself in “The Fly?”
But these plot machinations are only set dressings, not mysteries to be solved. Director Claire Denis is focused on filling the screen with images that convey a skin-crawling, melancholy mood. She is a filmmaker in love with skin and hair and vibrations and grunts and, in this film, blood, all set to the haunting music of Tindersticks coupled with a brilliant and sickening sound design.
From the very first scene of a nameless couple kissing so deeply they verge on devouring each other, Denis is pushing the boundary that divides sex from literal consumption, and then manifests that transgressing that line. Casting Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle, both actors well-known for their personal transgressions, as her cannibalistic leads was an especially astute choice as they effortlessly skirt the line between mysterious appeal and obvious menace. Coupled with their caring and lovely spouses, Shane and Coré are tied to normal society through love, but the sickness they carry will forever keep them separate.
After stunning the world with her hypnotic film “Beau Travail,” French director Claire Denis next released “Trouble Every Day.” The film was not well received in 2001, and it was years before it was reassessed and granted its current reputation as a sensual classic of the French Extremity genre. In many ways, labeling “Trouble Every Day” a horror film in general, and an example of French Extremity has limited its appreciation among horror and non-horror fans alike. There are two scenes of extreme violence, both wrapped up in sex that has been anticipated with victims who the audience has come to know throughout the film. Two realistic, sexually violent, and physically painful scenes is much too much for one set of viewers, and nowhere near enough for another set. Rather than comparing this film to the apex French Extremity films like “Martyrs” or “Inside,” it is better to pair it with those films it has influenced. Julia Ducournau’s “Raw” and “Titane” as well as Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” are also artistically sound films that explore the connection between sensuality and life-giving consumption while also grappling with sickness as identity. But it is “Let the Right One In” that recalls the lonely yet loving relationships that make up the core of Denis’s film. All these films join their ancestor “Trouble Every Day” in being simply gorgeous films that happen to be horror films.
For this screening, poet Iva Moore, hailing from Waverly, KY, and lately NYC, will be relating the anxiety about sickness that the film swims in to her creative process and film consumption itself. Moore is the author of the award-winning chapbook “Women Collapse Into / Better, Brighter Artists,” and will be reading her work and leading a post-screening discussion. This one time only CINEMA+ screening at the Speed Cinema is presented by the Lamplighter Film Union, a local film appreciation group committed to showing thoughtful film in thoughtful places.
More at www.lamplighterfilmunion.com
