Trouble Every Day (film)

Trouble Every Day is a 2001 erotic horror film directed by Claire Denis and co-written with Jean-Pol Fargeau. The cast includes Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle, Alex Descas, and Marilu Marini, with a soundtrack by Tindersticks. The story follows American scientist Shane Brown, who neglects his wife during their Paris honeymoon to track down his former colleague Léo Semenau and Léo’s wife Coré, who suffers from cannibalistic urges. The film is considered part of the New French Extremity movement. At its 2001 Cannes Film Festival premiere, it sparked controversy and polarized critics, with many audience members booing or walking out.

In the plot, Shane and his wife June travel to Paris ostensibly for a honeymoon, but Shane is actually hunting for neuroscientist Léo and his wife Coré, whom Shane once knew and was obsessed with. Léo, once a prolific researcher, now works as a general practitioner to stay unnoticed. He keeps Coré locked in their house, but she occasionally escapes, seduces men, and violently murders them; Léo buries the bodies. Shane investigates, and a former colleague gives him the couple’s address, explaining Coré is unwell. Meanwhile, two young men break into the Semenau home; one finds Coré in a boarded-up room. She seduces him, then bites him to death, ripping out his tongue. When Shane arrives, he finds Coré covered in blood. She tries to bite him, but he overpowers her, strangles her, and she drops a match that sets the house on fire. Shane leaves her to burn. Léo arrives to witness the carnage. After Coré’s death, Shane becomes distant. During sex with June, he stops, masturbates, and runs away. He adopts a puppy, then returns to the hotel while his wife is out. There, he brutally rapes and bites to death a maid he had been observing, then showers. His wife enters, and they agree to go home.

The film’s development began in 1989 when Denis met Vincent Gallo in New York. A television channel requested a horror project set at night in the city starring Gallo, but it never materialized. The idea of a gore film persisted. While filming Beau Travail, Denis resumed work on the screenplay with Fargeau, planning to cast Gallo and Béatrice Dalle. Central elements included romantic relationships as predation, sexual desire, symbolic vampirism from 19th-century novels, mysterious illnesses, and references to ogre and princess tales. D