Trouble Every Day Review: Claire Denis’ Vampirism

Claire Denis strips back the mythology of vampirism to its most primal and human in Trouble Every Day.

Each character navigates the different ways lust and obsession break the path to understanding. As expected from the French director’s minimalist yet serpentine direction, Denis withholds any amount of emotional catharsis while exploring these characters’ mental states, which immerses the viewer in an atmosphere that basks feverish longing. 

The main narrative thread of Trouble Every Day follows newlyweds Shane (a distraught, messy-haired Vincent Gallo) and June Brown (a pixie cut-wearing Tricia Vessey, the angel in distress in this “vampiric” tale), who are just arriving in Paris for their honeymoon. The two are initially seen as very tightly knit to one another. But soon after the plane lands and they check in at the hotel, Shane becomes more distant. Vincent Gallo’s brooding facial expressions and wide-open eyes give the perception that Shane is missing something deeply. It is not an object that he left back home. Shane is searching for a woman from his past: Coré (Béatrice Dalle). It’s not because of a particular affection towards her, although his unfaithful tendencies occasionally get the better of him. He is searching for answers, and only Coré can respond.

Coré is a woman who can’t have sexual relations with a man without devouring him afterward. She’s the vampiric figure in Trouble Every Day, whom we meet during the film’s first ten minutes as she devours a local bus driver in a field at night. Denis never shows the violent act of cannibalism, steering away from exploitation. Instead, she only reveals its aftermath. Coré’s face and neck are covered in crimson red as she wallows in her sadness while caressed by her husband, Dr. Leo (Alex Descas), who picks her up after the incident. Like Gallo with Shane, Dalle also gives her character a look of despair and distress, although her performance is more restrained and subtle. A connection can be made between the actors’ performances and their characters’ respective forms of lust and search for desire.

Does Shane also thirst for blood through lust? All of this is revealed slowly but surely in Trouble Every Day, with Denis taking her time – the measured pacing that characterizes her filmography – to expand upon her themes of human desire, infidelity, and addiction. Desire in this film is a hunger that cannot be satisfied easily. Tenderness and violence are contradictions in relationships, yet in Denis’ vision for the movie, the two blur together to paint a portrait of raw emotional intensity. This is where Denis plays with horror conventions to cloud the film’s atmosphere with a sense of dread.

With taboo subjects of cannibalism and sexual obsession right at its center, the first thing that comes to mind is gore, and buckets of blood splattered across the screen. However, quite the opposite happens. Although there is an array of images that are haunting in their own right, such as a bed bathed in blood or Dalle’s Coré putting out a match in mere darkness, the horror elements in Trouble Every Day are more subtle and psychological than in most films that do have cannibalism in them. By utilizing the genre in this manner, Denis taps into the concept of skin and uses it as a bridge between the external and internal. This similar approach to cannibalism was utilized later on by Julia Ducournau in her feature-length debut Raw. 

Although many other horror films utilize cannibalism in a more extreme or bloody manner – Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All or Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, both of which I love wholeheartedly – the subtlety in tackling such a taboo subject adds a more human element to the story being told. Where the film fails is in uncovering the reasons why Coré and Shane are the way they are: blood-seeking, lustful creatures that, one way or another, devour their partners. Because the movie is very ambiguous, the viewer has to come to their own conclusions about their condition. It is a metaphor for their uncontrollable appetite for desire. However, this ambiguity creates a slight emotional detachment. You feel as if their character arcs remain incomplete because of the lack of insight. 

Beyond their primal urges, with Coré and Shane being vessels for the annihilation of individuality and otherness, Denis prioritizes mood and sensation over clarity, which works both against and in favor of Trouble Every Day. Nonetheless, there is an intent towards this lack of answers. In real life, people do not have all the answers to love’s quarrels. In the film’s setting, some digest their partners due to their inability to have these answers. A quick “bite” for them becomes an infection in the long run, such as an adulterer with their continual cheating in search of communication and satisfaction on an emotional level. There are many ways of looking at the dysfunctional relationships present in the film. 

Within the frustration one might have toward Denis’ lack of clarity of her vampiric elements – the thirst for blood when craving devotion – lies a hypnotic effect that causes ripples through the viewer’s mind, body, and soul. By removing the supernatural excesses of the vampire mythos, Denis distills it down to something profoundly human and affectionate: the uncontrollable need for intimacy turning into self-destruction. These characters devour their partner’s souls for something perpetually out of reach. The problem is that the more they consume, the further they drift from what they seek. For Denis, love is not solely presented as fondness or attachment. It is also an unpredictable force capable of both warmth and annihilation. Denis confronts the viewer with the idea that there is a chance of us losing ourselves through closeness. 

This is why it is a difficult film to approach – the hardest one in Claire Denis’ filmography, if you ask me. As one tries to get close to another, there’s always the fear of becoming another person, and our personalities shift ultimately as the relationship strains. Denis being so disruptive in her storytelling makes the viewer quite anxious when prompted by this idea. Whether the ambiguity frustrates or fascinates depends on the person watching the picture. But the film’s impact is undeniable. And so Trouble Every Day becomes an experience that lingers the more you ponder about it.

Trouble Every Day is now available to watch on digital and on demand.

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