The Cinematheque

“A hypnotic, unsettling work by one of the most sensuous filmmakers of the past 25 years … This initially castigated movie fits in with the tantamount themes that have dominated Denis’s work since Beau travail: madness, desire, and power.”

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

Claire Denis’s polarizing erotic shocker, a tale of devouring sexual desire, scandalized Cannes and became a defining work of New French Extremity, that transgressive brand of arthouse cinema born of the new century. Buffalo ​’66​’s Vincent Gallo and Betty Blue​​’s Béatrice Dalle star as unfortunates afflicted with a condition that turns carnal hunger into, literally, hunger for flesh. He’s an American honeymooning in Paris. She’s a Frenchwoman married to a doctor (Alex Descas). Denis’s only foray into horror to date, Trouble Every Day is an outré meeting of art and splatter film named after a song from Frank Zappa’s album Freak Out. The visceral cinematography is by Agnès Godard; the haunting score is by British chamber-pop band Tindersticks. Denis has credited Jeff Wall’s photography as inspiration for the film—it is, as she frames it, an ​“homage” to the Vancouver artist.

In French and English with English subtitles

Advisory: Trouble Every Day includes a scene of sexual violence.

“[An] inimitable horror film … Denis shoots this grisly-erotic roundelay in her distinctively woozy and elliptical style … The groggy atmosphere, aided immeasurably by Agnès Godard’s grainy cinematography and the punch-drunk score of indie-rockers Tindersticks, keeps you constantly beguiled.”

Keith Uhlich, Time Out