For this month of Halloween, the editorial staff of Konbini is preparing a horrifying series for you. From creepypastas to little-known horror films, passing by curses from elsewhere, a daily article will make you shiver until the day of the dead. If we talk to you about French horror cinema, you are probably thinking of High Tension, Martyrs, Sheitan or, more recently, Grave. That would be ignoring some older titles, which I’ll tell you about later in the month. But before these films listed, another started a real movement and is, if you think about it, one of (if not the) most important horror films in the history of French cinema. .Trouble Every Day, the only film of pure anguish signed Claire Denis. A film that in no way takes up the codes of the genre, which appropriates them to insert them into a story closer to French dramaturgy. All with images of rare violence, which will mark the retinas of more than one generation. Another vision of cannibalism At the end of the 20th century, the American journalist James Quandt described the new transgressive French-speaking cinema scene as New French Extremism”, a movement within the cinematographic landscape of France which has pushed the codes we know about it to their limits. This movement resulted in a gore branch which allowed the birth of Alexandre Aja, Pascal Laugier and all these films of the 2000s mentioned above. One of the figureheads of this movement, released a few months before Irréversible by Gaspar Noé, who translates well what this movement wants to tell, is therefore Trouble Every Day by Claire Denis. Precursor, subtle, difficult. The filmmaker, already known for Beau travail among others, tackles here the myth of the cannibal vampire, with a new approach: that of seeing in him a sick person in need of help and medical care. We follow two intertwined stories and whose bond is built as the story progresses. On one side, a silent Béatrice Dalle stuck in a room, attracting men to her and attracted by the blood that flows in the veins of her future victims. On the other, Vincent Gallo, on his honeymoon in Paris, who tries not to show his wife that he is not well and who is looking for a doctor who can help him (or not). Trouble Every Day is the definition of a carnal film. The dialogues are mostly absent subscribers, Claire Denis preferring to focus on the characters and their behavior. She has a unique way of filming the skin, the body, the mouth of these poor creatures. of danger, of the border not to be crossed but which one cannot prevent oneself from crossing in spite of everything. And all that goes through a staging of a brilliance rare in so-called horror cinema. Except this movie is so much more, you can’t limit it to that. Its legacy is too big, and its ambition too crazy. Without Trouble Every Day, no Grave, for example. Few French horror films have been so much analyzed, compared and studied. A success which was not immediate, which took time, but which is now unavoidable. It’s also a perfect Halloween movie for anyone who wants to see something other than silly, nasty blockbusters full of hemoglobin. Trouble Every Day is currently available for streaming on the Arte website, on Canal+, and on DVD.
Leave a comment