Also this issue: And So To Bed Christopher Nolan's Memento follow-up isn’t as memorable. -Cindy Fuchs repertory film Thrilling -S.A Screen Picks Showtimes

May 23-29, 2002

interview

Trouble Every Day

by S.A

Trouble Every Day isn’t, Claire Denis admits, an easy movie to watch. It turns out it wasn’t an easy one to make, either. Introducing the film at last fall’s Toronto Film Festival, Denis described feeling “bruised” after shooting it. “A film like this does have an effect, not only on the audience, but on me,” she explained the next day. “We went far.”

Partly inspired by Hammer horror movies and the poetic splatter of directors like Dario Argento and Mario Bava, Denis wanted to explore the complex connection between violence and sexual desire, but even she wasn't prepared for how close to the bone the film would cut. "I'm not a masochist at all," she explains in an accented rasp. "When you write a script, you try and pursue an idea -- either you make a joke, like Scream 2, or you have to be honest with it, even though it's a surrealist story. Although when I write the script, I describe emotion and sensation, there really is something that comes only through the interpretation of actor and actress, something that happens only on the set. You get possessed."

That was particularly true when it came to shooting the second of the movie's two sexual-assault scenes. Vincent Gallo performed the scene only once, with Denis operating one of two cameras. The images produced are among the most horrific -- and yet simultaneously poignant -- that cinema has yet to conjure, and it's not surprising that, even on the set, Denis could feel their power taking hold. "The actors and me, we went to it with a certain innocence," Denis recalls. "But when it was done, one take, we felt something very heavy, deep inside. It was when I said, ŒCut,' and then I realized the effect of the image, through the lens, on me. The pain that Vincent was expressing was so real that I felt it. None of us were ready for it. We were really shocked, as if it was all real, what we felt. And far less symbolic than we thought."