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July 11, 2009
Trouble Every Day (2001) - pt. 1
Trouble Every Day opens with a gorgeous, sustained kiss between an anonymous man and woman in an automobile. Their identities hold no bearing on the narrative, and they won't be seen again, but their exchange defines the ensuing film.
Denis spoke about how this scene came about in a 2002 interview with Aimé Ancian for Senses Of Cinema:
That's not where it was in the screenplay – that kiss – it was elsewhere, during a nocturnal ramble by Vincent Gallo, which incidentally wasn't filmed. But I still wanted to shoot the kiss because the kiss is the film. In the screenplay, the first scene is the scene in the plane. Stuart of the Tindersticks wanted to write a song, but not for the beginning of the film. And when I heard his song, I said to him: “Stuart, I think it should be at the beginning, you can't put it in after.” And so we can't begin with the plane, everything has to be pushed back for Stuart's song.
I'm curious as to whether the song preceded the title of the film, or vise versa. It has a certain cadence, a sing-song quality that deflects both its blunt literalness (it would sound even better, I imagine, if English weren't your first language) and the hue in which it casts the rest of the film. Between the kiss and the title, Denis' intentions are as clearly telegraphed as they are easy to forget - at least on first viewing - in the light of all that follows them.
I've seen this film twice in the past week, and three times total, and it just keeps getting better.
Posted by David Lowery at July 11, 2009 4:53 AM