Trouble Every Day - Claire Denis again. I realised at the first shot I saw it a while back and couldn't quite make it out. No indication where the story comes from: like L'Intrus it seems to be her own. Perhaps the attitude to the horror is key. It's not shock-horror, the horror intended to be scary. Instead, there's something very matter-of-fact about it, which comes over in the very clear way it is presented visually. Although the visual details are fairly extreme there's a sense almost of weariness, inevitability; this is something we can't escape. Unfortunately no 'Extra' interview with Claire Denis, so Beatrice Dalle's comment 'It's not about cannibalism... I thought it is a love story' must suffice. She, Denis, does work from philosophical premises and this film, for all its gory details, seems to have the rigour and distancing of a thesis, or a story intended metaphorically.
Denis's style: she excels at telling a story visually, rarely using words or dialogue unless essential. She seems to withhold information if possible, drawing the viewer into interpretation, leaving events with as little explanation as possible to give us space to be involved. Visually immaculate in detail and in sequence of scenes, in montage, and always beautifully shot.
Amazing: thought-provoking seems a wrong description since the effect is of a space we are invited to visit and revisit in recollection, a space that has similar points to our everyday 'reality' and yet has points completely unlike it. In the end it's so irrational that thinking isn't relevant, and yet that irrationality is why it is so close. If L'Intrus came out of reading Nancy, Trouble could have come out of reading Bataille.
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