Both films, as well as the semi-autobiographical Chocolat, about colonialism in Africa, will be screening at the Pacific Cinematheque as part of a mini-Denis festival starting this weekend. I got to talk briefly about Trouble Every Day with Ms. Denis when I interviewed her about Bastards for the Georgia Straight; I had no idea that conversation would be germaine so soon, so it made a handy Movie Note, which you can find in today's Straight.
For the interest of readers craving more, here's my Trouble Every Day paper that I wrote for class. Those unfamiliar with the film are urged to check it out at the Cinematheque, beginning this weekend. Note: there are spoilers throughout what follows!
FIST 336 final
assignment: rewrite
April 10, 2012
Horror
Beneath the Surface: Trouble Every Day
The
opening scene of Claire Denis’ Trouble
Every Day - of a young couple kissing in a car - is provocative precisely
because it appears on first glance to have no bearing on the narrative that
follows. The young man and woman do not appear again, and the gentle,
consensual eroticism of their embrace stands in marked contrast to the film’s
later scenes of predatory and murderous sexuality. Further, the genre cues are
all wrong; the scene suggests - along with images of shimmering lights
reflected on the surface of a Paris canal and the seductive, soothing music of
Tindersticks - that this is the beginning of a love story, not a horror film in
the mode of New French Extremism. Given the film’s title, which arrives
presently, shimmering like the surface of the water (and also present in the
lyrics of the Tindersticks’ song), viewers might assume that we are seeing, in
the kissing couple, more what is “every day” than “troubled” - though we may
naturally wonder where the trouble, exactly, lies. What we are being offered here
is, in fact, a surface (like that of the water) which we might inquire beneath.
Once we start looking for it, we may find that even this “normal” sensuality
between the couple contains within it elements that are troubling, if nowhere
as extreme as the psychosexual disturbances still in store.
First
and most obviously, the kissing couple cues us to be conscious of the oral
elements of eroticism. Both Coré
and Shane, later in the film, will make ferocious biting gestures when aroused,
and appear to “eat” the object of their desire (note here that the Italian
title for Trouble Every Day is the
rather garish Cannibal Love - a title
that would make more sense for a film by Ruggero Deodato than Claire Denis, but
which definitely connects to the film’s more extreme images). Oral sadism - the
desire to bite, as an aspect of eroticism - is hardly an unknown phenomenon; the
film, at its most savage, merely exaggerates the impulse, sets it free from any
considerations of safety or consent. Even in this opening kiss, there is a
hunger visible - particularly on the part of the young man, who is slightly
more aggressive than the female. Perhaps any passionate kiss contains an
element of the desire to devour, even if this desire is normally held in check.
The
power relations implied in the way Denis stages the scene are also worth
noting. The female is beneath the male, her throat exposed and vulnerable; there
is a look of trust and assent on her face, but also a passivity - she is the
kissed, he the kisser. This relationship, the female as the object of male sexual
desire, is mirrored formally: the woman is the primary focus of the camera, which
looks down on her, making her the viewer’s object; she receives our gaze much
as she receives the kiss. There is a power relationship present here, which the
film subtly queries, in part by the disconcerting nature of the camera gaze: there
is a tenderness and passion in this kiss that is unusual in any form of cinema,
and we may feel ourselves intruders in a private moment, placed in an
uncomfortable position from which to look. The film will lead us to even more
“troubled looking” later, when the camera serves as a cipher for Shane’s gaze
as he “stalks” the maid at the hotel, but even this opening scene raises
questions of how cinema participates in normal male-female power relations, and
suggests that aspects of this state of normalcy (for instance, the dominance of
the male gaze) may in fact be problematic.
The
next sequence of the film greatly develops this, showing Denis playing with and
subverting power relations between men and women, with much emphasis on looking.
Coré as woman-in-distress and sexual
object is the recipient of the trucker’s gaze, and initially might seem a
potential victim. This scene has parallels with the hitchhiking scene in David
Cronenberg’s Rabid, but unlike that
film, we do not know from the outset that it is the woman who is the source of
the threat. Denis’ ensures that we are aware of the intimidating power of the
truck (and thus the trucker) by having her camera track towards it as it backs
up - a disorienting shot, since we are not sure what is moving towards what,
prefiguring the unseen “collision” that is to take place between Coré and the
man. The only cue we are offered that the relationship of power here is not as
we may assume is the close-up of Coré’s face, as the trucker gets down and
walks towards her. Her face is huge in comparison to the rather small image of
the man, her eyes betray no fear or vulnerability, and her bemused, somewhat
cruel smile suggests she knows something that we - and the trucker - do not. If
“normal” sexual relationships in the film involve both repression of ones most
primal urges and the dominance of the female by the male, Coré’s function is to
provide a contrast, a point of rebellion: her very nature, as we will see, is
to break free of the constraints placed upon her, to act out the impulses that
Shane tries to repress, and even - in apparently smearing the blood of one of
her later victims on the walls of her attic prison - to make a sort of art out
of them.
A growing sense of wrongness
pervades the next two scenes of the film - Leo’s
“rescue” of Coré and
Shane’s bloody fantasy in the airplane bathroom, though part of what is most
disturbing about both sequences is the way in which both Leo and Shane react; both
men are shown accepting as normal what in fact is anything but, continuing the
film’s query of what we accept as everyday. When Leo finds Coré, he responds as
if it is a normal thing for a man to find his lover in a field next to a
half-naked male body. Further, Leo treats Coré as the victim, tenderly wiping
the blood off her face and kissing her protectively, contradicting the viewer’s
sense of what has transpired and our idea of what a rational reaction might
entail. His calmness in taking care of Coré suggests he has found her in
similar circumstances before, that he accepts that these are the conditions of
his relationship with her. This is quite disconcerting on first viewing: what
relationship could possibly explain a sense of normality that allows for ones
lover to do things like this?
Similarly, Shane’s reaction to
thoughts of his young bride covered in blood also suggests that, however
disturbed his fantasy may seem, it is part of the everyday conditions of his
existence; he may not welcome these thoughts, but he has had them, one feels,
many times before. More disturbingly, there is the sense that the images he has
of June - spattered in blood, her hand reaching toward him - are images of desire, rather than (as might seem more
reasonable) neurotic, unwanted intrusions from the subconscious. To confirm
this, Denis allows for not one but two fantasy images of June’s bloody face
smiling at the camera, her eyes meeting Shane’s (and our) gaze. As in
pornography, there is the sense that, in Shane’s fantasy, she desires what he
desires of her, however unlikely this may be in reality.
The sense
that something is very, very wrong between the men and women in this film becomes
a driving force in the narrative that follows: a sense of a disordered universe
has been created, which we hope the film will set right. This, it develops, is
Shane’s purpose; in trying to find Coré and Leo, he hopes to find a cure for
his condition, so he can restore order and finally consummate his relationship
with June. He becomes our primary source of identification in the film, the
character whose actions propel the narrative, the “hero.” Yet even as the film
begins to partake of elements of genre - the “scientific thriller” - the sense
that Shane’s dilemma has a bearing on everyday human life never entirely
vanishes. Shane telling his bride that he would never hurt her, striving to
control and channel his aggressive and sexual impulses, feeling inner conflict
about communicating his desires, making apologetic-cum-manipulative gestures for his failings like buying June a
puppy, and ultimately being more comfortable enacting some of his fantasies
with a stranger, are all recognizable male behaviours, even if the actual
manifestation of Shane’s desires are more extreme than one usually finds (many
men have likely had sexual trysts with hotel staff that proved non-fatal for
either party). It is quite possible for a male viewer (at the very least, the present
author) to recognize Shane’s plight and to read it as a commentary on what
being a man in contemporary society entails.
Of course,
Shane ultimately fails in his quest. When, at the conclusion of the film, he
says to June, “I want to go home,” there is the suggestion that, in lieu of a
cure, he has settled on a compromise (occasionally “eating” women other than
his wife, and continuing to protect her from his true nature). This suggests that
the institution of “home” itself is rife with such tensions and compromises,
and that if we look beneath its surface, we will find it fraught with danger,
aberrant desires and hypocrisy. If there is any hope at all in the film’s final
moments, it is that June appears to realize some of this, as she sees the blood
running down the shower curtain when she embraces Shane. Her wide open eyes, in
the film’s final shot, in fact bring to mind Coré’s eyes, as she watches the
trucker approach, suggesting at least a potential empowerment of the female
gaze - though June seems nowhere near Coré’s equal.
The real
tragedy of Trouble Every Day is not,
however, that Shane and June will likely return home with no real solution to
their problem at all, but that Coré, the artist, the figure who rejects what is
“normal,” breaks down barriers, and subverts power relationships in favour of
what is expressive and authentic, regardless of the consequences, must ultimately
be destroyed so that “normalcy,” such as it is, can triumph. In a way, she
seems the most honest character in the film - though she is also the furthest
from normal, which says something.
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