Psycho. #29

Chasing Trouble Every Day.

Just saw a film called Trouble Every Day & I'm completely obsessed. Everything from the off-kilter pacing & structure to Beatrice Dalle's animalistic performance to Vincent Gallo reminding me of Vincent Price for some reason (must be the creepy mustachioed face that complements his strange voice, haha). 

Any suggestions for horror films that have a similar atmosphere? Because I've seen a lot of horror films & there's nothing like this.

Perhaps a few words on Trouble Every Day and Claire Denis are warranted before I get down to your question — although I should warn you right off the bat that I suspect I may not have the sort of answer that you’re after. But lucky you! I feel as if, from your question, this may be your first experience of watching a Claire Denis film — since you say “a film called Trouble Every Day” and express excitement, even surprise, about what you beheld. What a director she is, and what a film this is: probably not quite my favourite of hers — that would be Beau Travail, with 35 Shots of Rum close behind — but perhaps her most nakedly thrilling, for all the reasons you outline. 

Tricia Vessey and Vincent Gallo in Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001)

I think the first quality that I associate with Denis is one of stubbornness — no, that’s not quite right, what is it I’m searching for? She sticks so strongly, with such certainty, to her own sense of what is right for a film — and that perspective is totally unlike anybody else’s, and can even be confounding. Denis will never supply you with easy answers or a straightforward interpretation; she is not particularly interested in plot, and even her handling of character is wayward. I feel like her characters are often subject to their environment; rather than being built up from within and being meticulously fleshed out, they are cursorily sketched out and made to respond to some kind of external pressure or calling. It is through this activity, through their response to the world around them, that we understand them — or, rather than understand, perhaps we apprehend them. In Beau Travail that world is the Légion Étrangère, and the contingencies that are brought to bear on the characters are beauty, desire, jealousy, masculinity, and a starkly drawn end of the world, all hot heat and white dust. In White Material the character is a white woman, a coffee producer, and the conditions that exert their force on her are colonialism and civil war; the location is an unnamed African country. Stars at Noon, her most recent effort, once again finds a white woman caught in the crossfire of conflict in a “foreign” country, Nicaragua this time: it is through these external considerations, through action and politics, and what the world may bring to bear on Trish, that we come to know her. 

Grégoire Colin and Denis Lavant in Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)