What if Jane Eyre's crazy Mrs.
Rochester was a cannibal? What if Rochester was becoming one
himself? What if the long-suffering Jane was a cloying little
pixie in pearl earrings and sweater sets?
For those of us who thought these burning questions would
never be answered, there's Trouble Every Day, the new
film from acclaimed French director Claire Denis (Beau
Travail, Nénette et Boni). Every shot where Shane
(Vincent Gallo) eyes his wife June's (Tricia Vessey) fragile
neck like it's filet mignon slams home what this film is
supposedly about: the consuming nature of love, connections
between violence and sex, possibly vampirism, and possibly
Victorian repression and morbidity. Not to mention Vincent
Gallo's icy ability to look totally creepy. There are many
unbelievable premises in Trouble Every Day, but the
most outrageous plot point might be that any woman would marry
him in the first place.
But that sweet little darling June seems to love the guy,
and they're happily on their honeymoon to Paris. Shane,
however, is fighting the urges to rub up on women in public
and to gnaw on his comely wife's arm (somehow these are both
symptoms of the same ailment). Meanwhile, Leo (Alex Descas), a
doctor who has been ostracized from the scientific community
due to his unusual experiments on, of course, human beings,
keeps his own wife Cor?(Béatrice Dalle) locked up in their
house for fear she'll seduce and snack on unsuspecting men.
Cor?manages to find a willing guy anyway, leading to one of
Trouble Every Day's very controversial sex cum
grotesque murder scenes.
Still, Cor?is no sociopath. She knows that chomping on her
lovers is wrong ("I'm sick! I'm sick!"), but she just can't
help it; it has recently become her nature. Evidently, her
cannibalism is the result of an experiment gone awry several
years ago in Guyana, at which time and place Shane and
Cor?were quite attracted to each other. Whether this means
they wanted to have sex, eat each other, or both, is unclear.
Regardless, while Leo may be the one physically blockading
Cor?from the real world, Shane is the one keeping her a secret
from his current love interest, which places him in the
Rochester role.
The Jane Eyre references aren't the only reasons the
film feels rather Victorian. Cor? for one, could have stepped
out of an absinthe-fueled decadent poem -- she's devastatingly
attractive and totally sexual, but will literally consume any
man who sleeps with her. Bizarre "scientific" objects abound,
like a glass tub of water with what looks like a giant
spinning pill in it, strange plant cuttings in test tubes, and
brains chilled in foggy dry ice, evoking the dim laboratories
of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells novels. Visually, the film
evokes this interest in "objects": extreme close-ups recreate
the characters' bodies as abstract landscapes of skin and
hair; especially when combined with the Tindersticks'
uncharacteristically minimal soundtrack, this kind of detail
is hauntingly moody, more than verging on the surreal and the
poetic. But Denis' attention to detail doesn't extend beyond
the purely visual. Narratively, Trouble Every Day is a
plodding mess.
For a brief time, the presence of the hotel maid,
Christelle (Florence Loiret-Caille), so much earthier and
sexier than June (and also, by far the most interesting
character in the film), throws some old-fashioned class
struggle into the mix. In this context, Trouble Every
Day also considers the threat posed by "dirty" sex; the
women Shane wants to harass and/or chew on are all of the
working or lower classes, from Christelle to an older woman on
the bus to a garishly made-up blonde. They provide Shane with
visceral satisfaction, while his angelic wife offers only
unadventurous sex. Symbolism doesn't get much blunter than
June's white kid gloves, an obvious visual contrast with Cor?s
sexy black slip or Christelle's bright blue eye shadow. Like
the truck drivers and teenage delinquents seduced and murdered
by Cor? these women are disposable, while Leo (the doctor) is
certainly not. Working this contrast all the way through might
have been effective, but Denis has as much interest in these
characters as Shane and Cor?do: once they are killed, no one
notices their absence.
In the film's most effective scenes, Christelle struggles
under the weight of Shane and June's suitcases, as they walk
behind her without offering help. As though invisible, she
makes the bed while the couple cuddles intimately, and her
vicious glares and efforts to ignore June's patronizing
attempts to be kind are refreshing affronts to Shane and
June's oppressive attitudes. Her eventual fate is chilling,
but for the wrong reasons, functioning as a hint of the danger
posed to June.
A friend who attended Trouble Every Day with me
remarked that he would have liked to see the film end with the
cannibals devouring each other. Although the violence in the
film is already indulgent, in some ways, I couldn't agree
more. Without that sort of unflinching consummation,
Trouble Every Day is comprised mostly of simplistic
dominant/submissive sexual power plays. As for Cor? her libido
has effectively overcome her personality, and she's merely
psychotic. In an attempt to re-envision the madwoman in the
attic, Denis renders her almost silent and, worst of all,
nothing more than mad.
From
www.popmatters.com
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