TROUBLE EVERY DAY  (2001)  ***

Reviewed 2/15/02

Claire Denis has been experimenting in her last few pictures with style and tone to varying degrees of success.  Here she fashions a horror art film, deliberately paced with an elliptical structure.  It gradually comes together that the story is about two doctors.  One (Alex Descas) tries to contain his wife (Béatrice Dalle) who is infected with an illness that inspires cannibalism; the other doctor (Vincent Gallo) is also infected and looks for a cure before he does harm to his new wife (Tricia Vessey).  Denis is most successful in subverting the usual glib murders in slasher flicks in providing true gruesomeness in a way that audiences cannot respond to with visceral excitement.  A shot of a green scarf drifting off Notre Dame Cathedral shows American Beauty how it is really done.   Denis however cannot quite hide that this movie is basically a highbrow take on some very lowbrow material.