When Claire Denis‘ TROUBLE EVERY DAY screened at Cannes in 2001, some audience members left the cinema in shock. The audience wasn‘t prepared for this completely new form of genre-transcending art horror 20 years ago. Horror fans weren‘t either, since Claire Denis‘ film requires a lot of patience and attention. In fragmentary sequences set to Tinderstick‘s ultra melancholic music, newlyweds Shane (Vincent Gallo) and June arrive in Paris to spend their honeymoon there. Their love is calm and gentle, but Shane is plagued by disturbing memories that he hides from his wife. He is also hiding his real reason for traveling there. It has to do with the motorcyclist who picks up a bloody, seemingly enraptured beauty (Beatrice Dalle) from a motorway lay-by, bringing her home in a similarly calm and gentle way. The few verbal exchanges and small details reveal the joint history of these couples. But what happens in the film after an hour is more than just regret over false ambition and cool desire, it‘s bloody excess in which monstrous passions are being channeled. If “body horror“ splatter were to follow, the film would be shocking for a short while, but otherwise easily digestible. But the more the protagonists try to put on their civilized and reserved masks, the clearer it becomes that the cruelty was already lurking from the start in the lack of emotion on display. This combination makes the film cryptic during the first watch, but in hindsight it opens parallels to social themes like social gaps that have received a lot of attention since the film premiered 20 years ago. The challenging film, newly restored and in German cinemas for the first time, invites you to decipher it.

Christian Klose

Translation: Elinor Lewy