Guy V. Cimbalo
All the elements of the horror genre are here: Mad
scientists cut brains open, sex-starved teenagers meet a nasty
fate, and newlyweds find more than they bargained for in the
City of Love. It goes on: An enormous drill is exposed to the
sounds of a tinny piano, the iris of a microscope is seen more
than once ?"Trouble Every Day" seethes with the kind of
ominous details that recall William Castle and
Vincent Price.
At the same time, "Trouble Every Day" has all the makings
of a paint-by-numbers French film. It portrays the romantic
entanglements of the haute-Agnes B.ourgoisie ?the inability to
consummate, the impossibility of knowing the one you love. And
then there's that procession of lower-class lonely hearts
victimized by this tragic elite. You can fill in the rest of
it from there, or you can just rent any Louis Malle
movie.
But don't rent anything by Malle. See this film.
In "Trouble Every Day," Vincent Gallo plays the
improbably named Shane Brown, a newly-married geneticist
arriving in Paris for his honeymoon. Shane's bride, June
(Tricia Vessey) soon discovers that their vacation will
not prove the typical tour-book experience. Shane won't have
sex with her, and in one particularly nasty moment, she
discovers him frantically masturbating in the bathroom. When
the two aren't petting each other uncomfortably in the
matrimonial bed, Shane does his best to avoid his virginal
bride, who spends most of the film decked only in white.
Brown's real aim in Paris is not a storybook ending. He
hopes to find Dr. Leo (Alex Descas), a disgraced
geneticist with marital problems of his own. Before he leaves
his spooky stone fortress, Leo goes through a epic series of
locks and bolts to keep his feral wife Core (Beatrice
Dalle) from getting loose. It is clear that Core is not in
perfect condition ?moving with predatory lust, she has already
devoured (literally) a truck driver. But even the bolted
shutters of her dark bedroom cannot keep Core from luring a
pair of neighborhood boys into the house, and the consequences
aren't pretty.
We learn that Shane, Leo and Core have met before, where
they conducted shadowy experimental research on the human
libido. Leo's radical ideas have earned him the scorn of the
medical community, and while the details are murky, the
experience left Shane and Core afflicted with the urge to
cannibalize their sexual partners at the moment of orgasm.
Brown searches desperately for Leo, believing that he holds
the cure, all the while finding it more and more difficult to
contain his urges. And then there's that attractive
chambermaid who keeps hanging around his hotel room. Rest
assured that by film's end, the virginal whites of his bride
and the bleached clean of housekeeping are all sullied by the
overwhelming need for flesh, blood and a good orgasm. But even
the film's most difficult scenes, beautifully filmed by
Agnes Godard and with a lurching, lyrical score from
Tindersticks, are hard to avoid.
This is Denis' follow-up to the remarkable "Beau
Travail," and it feels worlds apart. Freed from the
austerity of the French Foreign Legion, Denis creates a
brooding, nasty film. Co-written by Denis and
Jean-Pol Fargeau, "Trouble" plays like primal scream
and studied nihilism all at once. Denis easily straddles
various genre and mood without ever compromising the complete
rapture of the film. She also has the remarkable ability to
fool viewers into believing that armpits are actually other
items of anatomy.
The performances too are exquisitely pitched. What the
press kit calls Vincent Gallo's "distinctive talents" are in
top form. Slightly tortured, vaguely sick, and hugely ill at
ease, Gallo gives one of his strongest performances here.
While Beatrice Dalle doesn't actually say a word ?most
scenes have her whining in ecstasy as she tears open her
victim's neck ?she is perfect for what the role demands. With
her preternatural sexual charm, Dalle stalks the film with
appropriately unquenchable lust. Her sex scenes in "Trouble
Every Day" are how you would imagine sex with her off-screen
?animalistic, loud, and ultimately frightening.
"Trouble Every Day" invites a panoply of readings. The
precision of science versus the imprecision of emotion. The
case for power politics emerging from sexual instinct. An
unflinching look at AIDS. Corporate American greed's
adulteration of the pure sciences. Any of them, sure, but in
the end, who cares? "Trouble" is great entertainment and a
great reminder that even the most seemingly tired forms of
cinema can find incredible, new life.
From
www.indiewire.com
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