Trouble Every Day review

Shane (Vincent Gallo) is honeymooning in Paris with his young bride (Tricia Vessey), so it's only natural that he has lust on the brain. Thing is, the direction of his impulses isn't quite as you'd expect: he's desperate to track down a scientist, Leo (Alex Descas), who once partnered him in his experiments on the human libido. But Leo's disappeared from his lab, leaving his wife (Béatrice Dalle) behind him to explore her bizarre craving for flesh and blood.

Claire Denis' follow-up to the superlative, César award-winning Beau Travail is a far more interesting and troubling work than early word suggested.

Accompanied by a mournfully romantic Tindersticks soundtrack, Trouble Every Day is a European arthouse take on the vampire movie, in which the characters' cannibalistic cravings serve as a metaphor for ravenous sexual desires. The narrative's sketchily constructed and the dialogue minimal, but Denis' mastery of mood is in full evidence, the atmosphere of ominous unease finally giving way to a gruesome finale.