Trouble Every Day (film)

Plot

An American couple, Dr. Shane Brown and his wife, June, go to Paris, supposedly for their honeymoon. In reality, Shane has travelled to Paris to hunt down neuroscientist Dr. Léo Sémeneau and his wife, Coré, whom he once knew and was obsessed with.

Despite having once had a prolific career, Léo is now working as a General practitioner to keep a low profile. He locks Coré up in their house every day but she occasionally manages to escape and violently murder men. To protect her, Léo buries the bodies.

A couple of men who have been casing the Sémeneau home eventually break in where one of them finds Coré in a boarded up room. After she seduces him, they start to have sex, but she violently bites him to death, ripping out his tongue with her teeth.

Meanwhile, a doctor who once worked with Léo gives Shane the couple's address, explaining that Coré is unwell. After Shane rushes to the house he discovers that the house has been broken into and that Coré is covered in blood. He watches her light the house on fire and when she finally becomes aware of his presence she tries to bite him. However, Shane is able to overpower her. He strangles her and leaves her to be consumed by the flames. Just after he leaves, Léo arrives and witnesses the carnage and the dead Coré.

After Coré's death, Shane becomes strange and distant, stopping in the middle of sex with his wife and finishing by masturbating, running away from her, and adopting a puppy. Finally he returns to the hotel where he has sex with a maid, eventually biting her to death.

Cast

Release

Trouble Every Day was screened out of competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

Reception

The film received mixed reactions from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, based on 49 reviews, the film has a 49% rating; the consensus states: "An erotic thriller dulled by a messy narrative." Metacritic reports a 40/100 rating based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Variety wrote that it is "over-long, under-written and needlessly obscure instead of genuinely atmospheric." The Boston Globe was more positive, but concludes by calling the film "a success in some sense, but it's hard to like a film so cold and dead."

Later, the film developed a small following who admire it for its themes of existentialism and its unique take on the horror genre as well as gender roles. It was given an in depth analysis by Salon.com which looked at the intricacies of the film, particularly the metaphorical nature of the narrative. At Film Freak Central, Walter Chaw said, "Plaintive and sad, Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day is a rare combination of honesty, beauty, and maybe even genius." The film has been associated with the New French Extremity.