Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001)

This will perhaps be less of a critical look into this than the previous Denis' I've written of as I find this film to be perhaps a bit too overwhelming for me, personally. I can still recall the first time I watched this, during my edgy "New French Extremity" and "South Korean New Wave" (or whatever the 2000s were referred to as) period and not getting this at all. It was too slow, felt like it's style meandered too much, the minimal amounts of dialogue, the discontinuous editing style - it was just too "arty" for me, at the time anyway. I had a very similar reaction towards Antonioni's The Passenger the first time I watched that film. It took years for me to return to Denis. I believe it was one of her later films that I finally picked up her again and even then it took watching more of her until she finally clicked with me. 

It didn't help that at the time I my perspective of "NFE" was colored more by films like Irreversible, Martyrs, and Frontier(s) than the work of filmmakers like Grandrieux or the early work of Bruno Dumont. I expected gore and torture and cruelty the, in a phrase, "pushed the limits," of what I could handle. Not that I could ever label myself as a gore-hound, but when you approach a work like this with that kind of style in mind, you're bound to be disappointed in one form or another, as I was. The air of sadness overwhelms throughout, and melancholia wasn't what horror was about to me, at that time. It lacked the kind of visceral energy, the propulsion that other films I was watching at the time utilized in order to build up tension and keep me engaged. 

I could not comprehend that horror was meant to do anything beyond scare you or to instill fear inside of a viewer. And to achieve this outside of gore or some sort of violent act seemed absurd to me at the time. But like all things, we age and our tastes (hopefully) develop and are refined. The melancholia was revealed to me and I understood it's vantage, at least as well as I can understand anything that is. The longing for something, someone, that understands you, but you know that when you do reveal yourself to them fully, the result will only be pain - perhaps just for you, at worst, for both. There is no solution where both parties wind up happy. And the hunger is never satiated. 

There's a disenchantment with the world around oneself. Vincent Gallo's Shane Brown character is a man in search for a cure for what he craves. Money, love, sex - these are all things that one can obtain quite easily. It's not difficult to acquire things that society tells us will make us happy, these things will supposedly solve all our problems. If so why are we left empty when we have them? What is it that drives us to seek these things we know bring us no pleasure beyond the moment we're engaged in them. We are but vampires walking around in search of the next fix. In the dark we shall meet; and in the dark only one of us shall leave. 

I desire to be engulfed by you, to become subsumed in you. I know we are no good but we shall forever be intertwined. Our desire and pain, twisted together. There is beauty in this harmony but there is no stopping the eventual collapse. Caught in a vice-grip of each other, this is a suffering bound to last a lifetime. Hence why one must burn it down, in hopes of starting anew - and knowing that the result will be the same. Existing - it's trouble every day. 

I would be remiss to not mention the score by Tindersticks. To this day it is probably still my favorite score they've done for Denis. A beautifully tender but minimalistic series of pieces that sound so loud in a film so quiet. Erotically tinged danger that builds until that silence returns. A climax that rings out so the sound of nothing overwhelms at the conclusion. The lilting title-track makes my eyes swell every time I hear it.

Beau Travail (Denis, 1999)

The moment when it hits, you'll know. When everything comes together into formation. A crystallization of form, content, and perspective into a hardened diamond of pure aesthetical poetry. Where narrative seems to dissolve into the ether of a piece. Character is reduced into bodies moving into, past, against one another. Shapes crisscrossing. 

Not so much a work of montage (ala Mann's Ali) but a work of refinement of style. If Denis managed to hit upon her trademark, free-roaming camera gliding over bodies and landscapes with Anges Godard in her last film, Nénette and Boni, then here she finds their groove. The pocket in which their work becomes wholly singular to them and them alone. The masculine physical form rendered into poses akin to Roman and Greek statues. Posturing and posing before our eyes. Perhaps not since Leni Riefenstahl's Olympus films has the male form been so stunningly captured. Admiring but also distant, knowing the violence that stirs beneath these boy-ish facades. 

A war film typically focuses on the events in said war. The violence created from man and machine - bullets being fired colliding with the flesh, bombs detonating, etc. etc. But very few focus on the actual conflicts - man against man (not in a strictly gendered way, to be clear). The violence of two bodies, two personalities clashing in the field. Thrown about in fury. What is the actual war? Such mundanities that occupy the life of a soldier and ultimately cause friction between them. 

But these soldiers also occupy a space that does not rightfully belong to them. In theory, a soldier should be stationed out to protect whatever public from some sort of threat, but the only threat is from these very soldiers themselves. What is their purpose? To occupy the area. To fill a quota on a base. Safety for the public means frustration for those who have been hardened by the war(s) they have survived. One must challenge and demonstrate dominance over others as a form of perseverance in the face of boredom. Your right to exist isn't challenged (in this instance) but your right to land is.

Nenette and Boni (Denis, 1996)

An extension of sorts, from US Go Home, in both her central cast as well as the youthful libido. Blossoming in its extravagance, revealing itself to be both incredibly tender and unassuming as well as ferocious and troublesome. But it's never handled in a less than gentle way. Denis' eye here begins to showcase the sensuality that her work is so well known and praised for. Her attention to movement, the shapes of bodies, has finally started to reveal itself here. 

The way she tracks bodies moving. From room to room, inside a given space, short bursts of movement against longueurs of life. Emotions presented so straightforwardly against the realism of the performances. Everything is on the verge of breaking, but its fragility has one (Denis) capture it gently and with as little sentimentalism as possible. Yet so much of this is captured in close-ups. It's the first of her films that feels so deliberately close. If it wasn't so lovingly captured it'd be incredibly uncomfortable to view some of the scenes within. 

Perhaps because this is so explicitly about sexuality and family bonds that this can seem somewhat myopic by comparison to the films which came before it. The whole can seem rather insular, though Denis' attention to class dynamics is still very central to her whole process here. No one here has the capital to do much of anything beyond their means, nor does that really factor much into their goals. Monetary troubles only factor in when an unintended pregnancy arrives. Beyond that, to live and to work (and to fuck) is to live a life to the best one can. Though there is recurring desire for escape and hope for a better life elsewhere, or at the very least, a better tomorrow.