Trouble Every Day

Director: Claire Denis

2001 / 101min / 35mm

An abattoir-gory work festering with blighted sexuality, Trouble Every Day shocked audiences at its 2001 Cannes Film Festival debut with its graphic depiction of carnal hunger as a cannibalistic disease. American newlyweds Shane and June Brown (Vincent Gallo and Tricia Vessey) travel to Paris for what’s meant to be a honeymoon—but once there, Shane begins a search for his former colleague, Leo (Alex Descas), who may just be in possession of a cure to a tropical virus that makes both Shane and Leo’s wife (Béatrice Dalle) turn into bloodthirsty predators when aroused. The extravagant lips of the latter actress, fondly nicknamed “La Grande Bouche,” have never seemed quite so cruelly sensual as they do in Denis’s film, in which the City of Lights is possessed of a charnel house atmosphere and pervasive chill you can feel right down to the marrow.

Distributor: The Film Desk