Trouble Every Day

As probably one of only a handful of people in the world that simultaneously likes Vincent Gallo, Claire Denis, arthouse cinema, splatter trash, and dark erotica, I felt it was about time that a watch the somewhat curious French-German-Japanese co-production Trouble Every Day (2001). A sort of arthouse ‘anti-horror’ flick where sex, especially of the feminine sort, is depicted as something monstrous and even cannibalistic, Denis’ flick might as well have been co-directed by Mr. Gallo as his perturbingly peculiar presence permeates throughout the film. Indeed, if the weirdo self-loathing wop realms created by Gallo in Buffalo '66 (1998) and The Brown Bunny (2003) somehow managed to haunt the most white collar sections of Paris, it might begin to describe an unnervingly eccentric and strangely erotic film like Trouble Every Day where both blood and cum practically drip down the screen. Notably, Gallo previously starred in Denis’ rarely sceen made-for-TV movie US Go Home (1994) and Nénette et Boni (1996) aka Nenette and Boni (1996) and like in the previous two films, the actor/director has the last name ‘Brown,’ which seems to be both his favorite surname and color as his fairly eclectic career demonstrates. Like Gallo’s own films, Trouble Every Day is also consumed with the themes of male sexual neuroticism and female carnal carnivorousness, albeit depicted in an aberrantly allegorical way that uses and abuses conventions of horror cinema to the point where it makes one wonder whether or not Denis has any real serious respect for the genre at all. Undoubtedly, Denis’ film feels like a horror flick created by someone with nil interest or knowledge of the genre aside from possibly French fantastique filmmakers like Jean Rollin and Jean-Pierre Bouyxou and autistic surrealists like Alain Robbe-Grillet. The story of a somewhat young American doctor of the proudly materialistic and sexually frustrated sort who takes his new pixie ditz wife to Paris for their honeymoon with the dubious ulterior motive of attempting to hunt down his ex-partner as well as one true love, who is a highly visceral quasi-vampire of sorts that suffers from a mysterious illness that compels her to seduce and cannibalize horny men of all types, Trouble Every Day is ultimately a tale about the insatiable sexual appetite of the fairer sex and the great and oftentimes pathetic lengths men will go to try in vain to satisfy said insatiable sexual appetite. A work where Gallo savagely kills a cutesy frog girl by literally eating out her pussy to the point where his signature mustache and goatee are soaked in more blood than gash gravy, Denis’ film notably links the sexual to the violent and bestial in such a seamless way that it is hard to discern when a character is merely sharing their carnal knowledge with their sexual partner or viciously feasting on their flesh. Indeed, Denis does the seemingly impossible by taking the themes popularized by Jess Franco in films like La comtesse noire (1975) aka Female Vampire and giving them a nice pristine polish of artistic legitimacy that still manages to bite. Of course, what better casting for such a film than Gallo as a symbol of male sexual insecurity and feral-like femme fatale Béatrice Dalle as symbol of raw and visceral female sexual savagery. Undoubtedly, if nothing else, Trouble Every Day is a film that brings new mean to the age-old French phrase for an orgasm, “La petite mort” (aka “the little death”). 

 After some truly picturesque shot of Paris during the blue hour, Trouble Every Day introduces vampiric femme fatale Coré (Béatrice Dalle of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue (1986) and Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991)) as she lures a slightly overweight trucker into her particularly pernicious path of deadly debauchery. When we see Coré again, she is kneeling in a field with blood on her face in close proximity to the seemingly smiling corpse of the trucker, who the deleterious dame fed upon after seducing him. No longer in control of her own actions as a results of contracting some sort of unexplained virus or disease that makes her act like a rabid erotomanical vampire, Coré is watched over by her unconventionally cuckolded negro husband Dr. Léo Semenau (Denis regular Alex Descas of Raoul Peck’s Lumumba (2000) and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)), who takes it upon himself to bury the corpses of his wife’s exclusively white victims and clean the blood off her body after she has finished feeding. Once one of France’s most respected and successful neuroscientists, Léo had to quit the powerful pharmacology company that he worked for and now works as a lowly general practitioner so that he can take care of his wife and dedicate much of his time to attempting to find a cure to her curious affliction. When away at work, Léo keeps Coré boarded up in a room so that she cannot get outside and use her ravishing beauty to ravage unsuspecting men. Unbeknownst to Léo, two young men have been stalking his house and plan to vaginally plunder his wife, which she is literally begging for as demonstrated by the fact she tries break off screens that cover her windows when she sees the guys coming near him home.  To make matters worse, Léo has to refrain from sexual acts with his bloodthirsty wife lest he become one of her victims.

 Newlyweds Dr. Shane (Vincent Gallo) and June Brown (Tricia Vessey of Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)) are in a plane headed to Paris to ostensibly celebrate their honeymoon, or so the less than good doctor wants his young and dumb spouse to think. Indeed, while he might be taking his wife on a fancy dream vacation to a part of Paris that is not festering with third world rabble, Shane’s real motivation to go to the City of Light is to reconnect with his ex-partner Léo and especially his assumed ex-lover Coré. While in the plane bathroom, Shane has grotesque vision of his wife June completely covered in blood, thus hinting that he might suffer the same malefic malady as Coré and is afraid that he might do something like munch on his new wifey's mammary glands, hence why he will refrain from carrying out coitus with her for the remainder of the film. Indeed, instead of royally fucking his young and fertile wife upon checking into their room at their luxury Parisian hotel, Shane pathetically lies on his stomach on a bed and masturbates in a lackluster fashion while having a melancholic expression on his face. When Shane finds his wife bathing in their hotel room bathtub, he stares at her pussy in an impotent fashion and strangely asks her “Are you frightened?” as if he has reason to believe that she thinks he might rape her or something. Meanwhile, Shane begins regularly going by a super sterile corporate lab that Léo used to work at before disappearing where people dissect brains, but everyone there refuses to talk to him. When Shane finally gets the opportunity to talk to one of the scientists, he is told regarding Léo, “He just left without a word or trace. He just up and left. We haven’t heard from him since.” In a random flashback scene, Shane talks to a bitchy French scientist who accuses him of loving Coré, to which he replies, “It’s not the right word for it. I was attracted to her. She was so stubborn,” thus indicating the two might share a more ‘unconventional bond.’ When the female scientist attempts to agitate Shane by asking him his thoughts on loyalty and betrayal and he defensively responds, “You were not there. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know me. You’re wrong,” she proceeds to accuse him of stealing both Léo’s research and lover, as well as experimenting on humans, and then throws him out of the lab. 

 In a key scene in the film that seems somewhat insignificant, Shane goes on the internet and looks at a scientific website that states regarding Léo’s research, “These samples and analyses should in the near future help us to focus our pharmacological research into nervous diseases, pain, mental diseases, and problems of the libido.” Although never made totally clear, it can be probably assumed that Coré’s lethally lecherous behavior is the result of taking sort of experimental drug that did a little more than just increase her lust for cock, hence her hubby’s fanatical obsession with finding her a cure. Meanwhile, Coré states to her husband while he is giving her an intimate post-murder sponge bath, “I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to die.” Notably, in various lighthearted scenes where director Denis seems to almost mock the horror genre, Shane does parodies of both the Frankenstein monster and Dracula while going on a happy stroll wife his wife around Paris, though he is later revealed to be a monster that is much more heinous than those classic horror figures. After at least one previous failed attempt, two young men, Erwan (Nicolas Duvauchelle of Denis’ White Material (2009)) and Ludo (Raphaël Neal), manage to break into Léo’s house to get to Coré, who practically begged them to let her out before by banging on a window screen like a wild animal. After destroying some of the beakers and nonsensically swallowing some of the pills that they find in Léo’s home lab, Ludo roams around the house while Erwan searches for Coré, who he finds behind a boarded up doorway and who he instantly becomes entranced with, passionately kissing and touching her through the cracks between the boards. Like a wild beast full of rabid lust, Erwan wastes no time ripping off the boards off the door and proceeds to violently kiss and caress Coré, but the fun does not last long as the ferocious feral lady soon begins biting off pieces of flesh from his pretty boy face. When pansy Ludo hears his friend’s strange groans of agonizing pain, he decides the best thing to do is run away like a petrified coward. Like a pussycat, Coré sadistically plays with Erwan before killing him by fiddling with his dangling flesh and softly rubbing her blood-soaked face against his in perniciously playful fashion. Ultimately, Coré murders Erwan and uses his blood to finger paint a wall in her home in a way that might lead some to suspect that she is some sort of degenerate modern artist. 

 When Shane gets a call from a girl name Malécot (Hélène Lapiower) from the science lab where she tells him in an almost conspiratorial fashion, “There is something I want to tell you but I cannot tell you here,” he wastes no time in setting up a meeting with her. Upon meeting up with Malécot, Shane is given Léo’s address and told, “I’m helping you because Léo needs a friend.” When Malécot mentions that Coré is severely sick, Shane acts like a drama queen and immediately runs away without saying a word. In a rare instance of comic relief, Malécot says to herself upon witnessing Shane's strange behavior, “Shit. I hope I didn’t do something stupid.” Of course, Shane immediately makes his way to Léo’s house and soon discovers that cracked cannibal cunt Coré has been playing with matches and has set the place on fire. While Shane wastes no time in embracing Coré as if attempting to recapture the good old days, he decides to strangle the bitch to death when she gets a little bit too rough for his taste and her corpse is subsequently engulfed in flames in a glaringly fake CGI scene that probably should have been cut from the film. While Shane goes back to the hotel to sexually service his wife, he cannot bring himself to consummate his marriage and instead goes in the bathroom and jerks off while June cries and bangs on the bathroom door while calling his name. In a rare instance of onscreen ejaculation, Shane blows his milky load on the bathroom floor. After busting a nut, Shane runs out of the hotel and June chases after him in vain, but of course she never finds him. 

 After going through her husband’s cellphone history, June decides to get in contact with Shane’s ex-partner Jeanne Ghislain (Aurore Clément of Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien (1974) and Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984)). When Jeanne shows June an old photograph of Shane and asks her “Has he changed much?,” she revealingly replies, “I wouldn’t know,” thus underscoring the fact that she has married a man that she knows nothing about. Meanwhile, Shane buys June a puppy at a pet shop and lurks around subways where he seems to manage to seduce women merely by looking at and touching them, thus hinting that he, not unlike Coré, has some sort of entrancing power as a result of his affliction that helps him seduce his prey. Ultimately, Shane proves he does have such a metaphysical mating power when he goes back to his hotel, follows a maid named Christelle (Florence Loiret Caille of Denis’ Les salauds (2013) aka Bastards) back her locker room, sexually seduces with next to nil effort, violently manhandles her, and then kills her before performing cannibalistic cunnilingus on her sweet frog cunt. In the end, June goes back to the hotel and finds Shane showering and asks him, “How you feeling, Doc?” and he affirmatively replies, “I feel good.” While embracing Shane after they mutually agree to go back to America, June gets somewhat of a chill upon noticing a drop of blood dripping down the shower curtain. It might just be my intuition, but I doubt that Shane will be as loving and delicate with June as accursed negro cuckold Léo was with his vampiric whore wife Coré. 

 For whatever reason (I suspect it is at least partly because many women are with men that they are in no way sexually attracted towards), many people have the outstandingly moronic belief that women have smaller sexual appetites than men, but the opposite is actually true. Aside from the fact that it is not uncommon for women to have a dozen or so orgasms in a single sexual session where a man only has one (not to mention the fact that female orgasms are apparently more intense than male orgasms), as well as the fact various porn stars have had their gashes plundered by literally hundreds upon hundreds of men in a single gang bang, certain philosophers have argued that the fairer sex is sexuality personified and nothing more, or as Otto Weininger once wrote, “Woman is only sexual, man is partly sexual, and this difference reveals itself in various ways. The parts of the male body by stimulation of which sexuality is excited are limited in area, and are strongly localised, whilst in the case of the woman, they are diffused over her whole body, so that stimulation may take place almost from any part.” Undoubtedly, the character of Coré in Trouble Every Day is a solely sexual creature of the innately sensually intemperate sort who literally lives to fuck men to death to the point where she even attempts to consume her hubby. Although the character Shane has the same affliction as Coré, he is at least able to control himself to a certain extent and find other outlets for his homicidal horniness. Surely, no one can finish Denis’ film and not come to conclusion that women are the most sexually insatiable gender.  Of course, women have to pretend to not like sex so much because it is the only real commodity that they have to offer to men and they know it.

 While some of her films do feature certain strange feminist elements, Denis is far from a Dworkin dyke or Agnès Varda fan-girl as demonstrated in an interview she did with Interview Magazine where she soundly stated, “I've never seen a world where only men were responsible for the violence and the women were innocent. They go together. Men and women are a violent mixture.” Of course, as Trouble Every Day demonstrates, Denis’ quote can also be applied to sexual violence. It should be noted that in the film it always seems as if the victims search out their predators, but of course you cannot have sadists without masochists and vice versa.  As personified by the Coré character, women typically use more passive-aggressive and ‘esoteric’ (translation: underhanded) tactics when it comes to using violence, hence why men get all the blame.  What ultimately makes Denis’ flick an unconventionally darkly erotic work is not its various beaver close-up shots, but its portrayal of sex as something innately visceral, bestial, and, in turn, truly transcendental. Indeed, although it might seem somewhat deranged, one could argue that the ultimate sexual climax would be dropping dead after busting a load, or so one might assume after watching Trouble Every Day. While apparently many people were shocked when it was released and could not fathom that it was actually directed by a woman, I would argue that it could have only been directed by a woman and a rare honest one at that, which is unequivocally one of Denis’ greatest strengths as a filmmaker. Indeed, not unlike Valie Export, Ulrike Ottinger, Helma Sanders-Brahms, or any other honest and worthwhile woman filmmaker that does not waste their time with sterile and outmoded feminist polemics, Denis is not constrained be the sort of frivolous moral dilemmas that plague men, especially when it comes to sexuality, hence her assumed appreciation for a man like Vincent Gallo who has no problem directing himself receiving an unsimulated blowjob for a film. Out of all the sort of genre-cannibalizing ‘postmodern’ vampire flicks that have been made over the past couple decades, including Michael Almereyda's Nadja (1994), Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995), Larry Fessenden's Habit (1995), Guy Maddin's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002), and Denis' ex-employer Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Trouble Every Day is certainly the greatest, freshest, most original, and least contrived, but I guess one should not expect anything less from a film where none other than Vinnie Gallo voraciously feasts on a fresh young frog foregut. 

-Ty E

Blind Spot (1977)

Long before his rather brief stint in Hollywood during the early 1990s when he directed both Drop Dead Fred (1991) and Highway to Hell (1991), which were both massive critical and commercial failures that ironically went on to earn cult followings, Dutch auteur Ate de Jong (Het Bombardement, Brandende liefde aka Burning Love) created somewhat low-budget and minimalistic arthouse oriented works in his homeland of the Netherlands. Indeed, a year after contributing a segment to the four episode tragicomedy Alle dagen feest (1976) aka Every Day a Party, de Jong completed his somewhat gritty dark romantic-comedy Blindgangers (1977) aka Blind Spot starring tall, dark, and handsome Dutch leading man Derek de Lint (Soldaat van Oranje aka Soldier of Orange, De aanslag aka The Assault) in his very first major role. Although oftentimes humorous, de Jong’s film is a largely dejecting work that depicts the slow and increasingly painful breakup of a young couple living in a white ghetto in post-counterculture era Holland. Admittedly, I hate virtually all rom-coms and romance flicks in general as I cannot relate to them in any way and find the humor to be about as funny as a corporate PSA, but then again I am not a physically weak and ugly neurotic Jew-boy who finds himself in the seemingly unlikely situation of attempting to vie for the attention of a beauteous shiksa who would never dream of dating some scrawny heeb in any sane world. Despite being nearly four decades old, Blind Spot is still relevant to modern couples in that it depicts the seeming impossibility of relationships lasting more than a couple year in an era when women give pussy away for free and no longer require men to marry or have children with them. The film is also notable for going into anti-feminist and borderline misogynistic territory and daring to depict the lack of decisiveness, irrationality, and flagrant bitchiness that plagues a woman when she finds herself doubting her relationship, but of course the flick is no more flattering in its depiction of its male protagonist, who is portrayed as jovially foolish, obscenely oblivious, and innately moronic yet somehow absurdly arrogant. Indeed, Blind Spot is not the tale of Tristan and Isolde or Romeo and Juliet, but a portrayal of a love affair that is patently pathetic, prosaic, and, in turn, realistic. Like the lovers in the film, the viewer does not want the couples' relationship to end but at the same time cannot deny the fact that it is ultimately inevitable that the two lovers will part ways. Set in dilapidated apartment buildings, sleazy dimly lit bars, and dirty laundry mats to the bombastic and oftentimes goofy sounds of degenerate Dutch jazz as composed by notable jazz bandleader, composer, and Kurt Weill authority Willem Breuker (Jos Stelling’s De illusionist aka The Illusionist, George Sluizer’s Twee vrouwen aka Twice a Woman), de Jong’s work is thankfully not as Brechtian as it sounds as it is an honest-to-goodness flick fueled by lovelorn lifeblood of the all-too-human sort. 

 For whatever reason, young male protagonist Mark Jonkman (Derek de Lint) has decided to attend a screening of an ancient black-and-white English-language film where a man self-righteously declares “I will not kill a woman!” upon refusing to take part of the killing of a discernibly lecherous flapper chick who is subsequently gunned down by a robotic firing squad.  Not unlike Mark, a young beauteous blonde in her early-20s named Danielle Sandberg (Ansje Beentjes of Roland Verhavert’s 1974 Hendrik Conscience adaptation De loteling aka The Conscript) watches the film as if oddly entranced by the banality of the old fashioned flick.  After the curious vintage film concludes, Mark is approached by cutesy blonde Danielle in the movie theater lobby who offers him a cigarette that he rejects and then attempts to make small talk with him by asking if he goes to the movies often, to which he semi-pretentiously replies, “I go to plays more often.” While Danielle attempts to get Mark to go on a date with her and he acts disinterested and tells her that he has no money, the male protagonist eventually gives in and agrees to go to the young lady’s house since her parents are not there. Since her parents are rather wealthy professionals, Danielle lives in a large and lavishly furnished home, which Mark will later come to resent as he is the son of a modest bicycle shop owner who he rarely sees. Since he is superficially charming and exceedingly extroverted, Danielle successfully guesses that Mark is an acting student. In scene that foreshadow the problems they will have in their relationship, Mark arrogantly assumes that Danielle is an antique store owner when, in fact, she is a student of Slavic Languages and Literature, especially Russian and Serbo-Croatian (which are, notably, the languages of the now non-existent nation of Yugoslavia, which the female protagonist will later consider traveling to after her romance begins to fall apart). Ultimately, Danielle uses the excuse of there being imaginary rats in her attic so that she can get Mark to go up so that she can seduce him. Flash forward two weeks later, the two protagonists have fallen deeply in love with one another and Mark brings Danielle a present in the form of a small box of mint tea that has a key hidden inside. Of course, the key is Mark’s way of asking Danielle to move in with him, which she immediately does. While fixing up their new apartment, Danielle reluctantly admits to Mark that she hopes they will “always be together” and he responds somewhat insensitively by saying, “’Always’ is a big word.”  As Danielle will eventually learn, nothing lasts forever.

 At a little bit before the ten minute mark of Blind Spot, the film has flashed forward two years and skipped over what the viewer assumes was the greatest moments in the Mark and Danielle’s once hot-and-heavy relationship. Danielle is depicted looking more than a little bit melancholy while sitting at a bar where she is soon met by Mark’s conspiring beta bitch friend Paul (Jim Berghout) who, being the socially inept and impotent science nerd that he is, pretends to deeply empathize with the female protagonist so that he can get into her precious pink panties. Danielle is pregnant and she is considering dumping Mark because he has a sort of hippie attitude to romance and is not serious about getting married or having kids. After going back to Paul’s apartment, Danielle informs him that she is pregnant and is probably going to get an abortion. Meanwhile, Mark finds Danielle’s birth control pills and realizes she has not be taking them regularly, thus leading him to assume that she is pregnant. When Mark comes to pick up Danielle from Paul’s place and she acts like a cold and callous bitch to him, it only reinforces his suspicion that she is pregnant, yet he does not have the balls to ask her if she is knocked up. Of course, considering that he has a pathetic boyish crush on Danielle, Paul neglects to tell Mark that his girlfriend is pregnant. As girls tend to do while they are irritated at their lovers, Danielle proceeds to bitch to Mark about a bunch of frivolous things like how the milkman had too many zits when he is driving her home. In fact, Danielle decides to randomly get out of Mark’s car and continues her bitching campaign while walking down the street while her boyfriend tries in vain to talk some sense into her. In fact, Danielle go so far as far as attempting to make her beau jealous by stating, “…Paul was nice. I could hardly resist him,” but Mark eventually manages to get back in the car. 

 When the couple finally gets back to their apartment, Mark attempts to get Danielle to open up to him about her feelings, asking her, “Why do you act so strange? You’ve been acting like a stranger for weeks. When I want to help, you don’t talk me,” but the only thing she can do is complain about being terribly tired and her head hurting. When Danielle complains “my head hurts” when he attempts to type up an article for work on his typewriter while she is attempting to sleep, the protagonist decides to roam the streets and call his father on a payphone that his girlfriend might be pregnant as if he is actually happy about the prospect of becoming a daddy. The next morning, Mark attempts to have sex with Danielle, but she acts fiercely frigid and callously complains, “You don’t have to use your body to prove you love me. You have done that for years.” In an attempt to gauge how serious Mark is about the future of their relationship, Danielle asks him where he thinks they will be in five years and he states in an idealistic fashion they will because split up because, “All relationships that last longer than two years, go wrong.” After rightly describing Mark’s response as a “pseudo-artistic performance” (indeed, it is quite obvious that Mark thinks he is some sort of enlightened post-counterculture progressive who rejects the outmoded morals of the dreaded bourgeoisie), Danielle decides to go against her beau’s wishes and plans a trip to Yugoslavia, but when she goes to her rich parents for money, she discovers they are out of town. Before even going on the trip, Danielle writes Mark a letter saying that she will be away for three weeks that ends with, “I won’t come back to you.” Upon meeting an elderly blind man that she finds sleeping inside a photobooth who she ultimately takes a series of photos with and who describes how he is still very much in love with his dead wife of 20 years, Danielle realizes there really is no future with Mark as she could never imagine him having the same feelings about her as the old widow does of his deceased spouse. 

 Needless to say, when Mark comes up with the rather absurd plan to save his relationship with Danielle by surprising her by bringing home two middle-aged swingers, Fons (Ben Hulsman) and Joke (Lettie Oosthoek), she becomes exceedingly enraged, especially after the male partner-swapper, who is old enough to be her father, slaps her on the ass in a sassy fashion.  Somewhat absurdly, Mark attempts to rationalize his actions by remarking, “That’s the future of all relationships. Partner-swapping, cheating, separate holidays, divorce. Everybody we know had one of those problems. And it’s the children who suffer.” Ultimately, Danielle rebuffs Mark for being so presumptuous as to inform his father of her pregnancy and invite swingers over without asking her about it first, complaining, “By never asking me, you’ve changed my feelings towards you.” Without even admitting she is pregnant, Danielle decides to get an abortion while her boyfriend is busy washing clothes at a laundry mat where he begins playfully flirting with a frigid four-eyed feminist named Anette Urk (Maroesja Lacunes), who is less than impressed with his boastful behavior and gets especially annoyed when he asks her, “Why are activist women always so unfriendly? “You think every man’s your enemy, but they can be your friend too. Or do you prefer women?” After proudly declaring, “I’ve never been cheated on by a woman,” Anette moves to the other side of the laundry mat and Mark follows her after noticing she has left a pair of her panties in a washing machine. After acting vaguely suave and blaming his rudeness and “bad mood” on an imaginary car crash, Mark actually manages to get Anette to come back to his apartment with him. Indeed, unbeknownst to Mark, he is attempting to cheat on his girlfriend at the very same time said girlfriend is getting a secret abortion, thus underscoring the innately deceitful behavior of both lovers. Somewhat predictably, Danielle catches Mark messing around with Anette in their attic. While Mark stops making out with Anette due to feeling guilty before things go too far, the damage is already done. Ironically, Anette goes from being a female-power-pontificating prude to a desperate horny woman when Mark rejects her to the point where she pathetically asks him “Am I not pretty enough?” like a little girl with low self-esteem. Ultimately, Mark makes the sexually frustrated feminist leave via a roof window despite the fact she is afraid of heights. 

 When Danielle tells Mark that they need to talk and says, “The decision has been made, but there are no words to talk about it,” it becomes quite obvious that their wrecked relationship is over, though the female protagonist is too afraid to actually execute her decision and leave for good. After telling Mark, “I don’t love you anymore,” Danielle runs to a nearby sleazy bar and her lovelorn beau naturally follows her like a scared puppy dog. After arriving at the bar, Mark goes to the bathroom to take a leak and is disturbed to find a decidedly deranged Dutch soldier waving a knife at him. After convinced the demented soldier not to stab him he stabs some pipes in the bathroom, Mark unexpectedly learns something about love from the fucked fellow when he hands him a photo of his ex-girlfriend and says, “Once a woman has taken that decision, that’s it.” After a later incident where Mark attempts to force himself on Anette at the same time pussy Paul pathetically attempts to get into Danielle’s panties, the couple temporarily makes up and has make-up sex, but the happiness does not last long. After they share carnal knowledge, Mark expresses his regret about Danielle getting an abortion, stating to her, “As long as that abortion won’t haunt us forever,” as if he knows their relationship cannot last due to their traumatizing experiences. When Danielle falls asleep, Mark absurdly decides to go out in public while wearing nothing but a coat and is ultimately arrested. Of course, the police give Danielle a call and when she arrives at the police station, the cop on duty asks her if she loves Mark and she responds yes. Upon releasing Mark from his prison cell, the cop states to Mark, “You’re lucky with such a nice girlfriend. Hurry, before she changes her mind.” Unfortunately, in the end, Danielle does change her mind and decides to go on the trip to Yugoslavia in what is a symbolic end to their relationship. 

 Not unlike Dick Maas, Ate de Jong is responsible for some of the most conspicuously contrived and Hollywoodesque Dutch films ever made, so Blind Spot makes for an especially interesting film in the filmmaker's oeuvre as much of its potency comes from its grittiness and rawness as a work that certainly does not look like it was directed by a mensch who beats his meat to George Lucas flicks. Indeed, I cannot think of another film where the creaking of floorboards as a result of characters walking around in a dilapidated apartment is so blatant. Of course, more importantly, the film dares to take a relatively realistic approach to dwelling on the more disconcerting aspects of romantic relationships to the point where, like in real-life, there is no happy ending or ideal resolution, thus leaving the viewer with a rare sense of bittersweet sincerity in the end that reminds the filmgoer that fairytales and Hollywood films have nothing to do with real life. Luckily, the film never falls into sappy sentimentalism like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), which although lauded for taking a more realistic approach to relationships and breaking up, ultimately ends on a hopeful note that feels like a cheap cope out. In terms of setting and tone, I think Blind Spot is best comparable to gay gutter auteur Andy Milligan’s once-lost X-rated masterpiece Nightbirds (1970), which is a considerably darker and more nihilistic work but takes a similarly tragic look at young love in the post-counterculture/post-feminist age. Aesthetically speaking, de Jong's film is like Paul Morrissey's Flesh (1968) meets Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) sans the Hebraic neuroticism and pseudo-eccentric intellectual masturbation. Aside from possibly his role in Guido Pieters' Jan Wolkers adaptation Kort Amerikaans (1977) aka Crew Cut, Derek de Lint gives arguably his most energetic and angsty performance of his fairly admirable acting career in Blind Spot, which is a rare film that somewhat benefits from its slightly amateurish and minimalistic direction because it intensifies its overall raw and visceral tone. While I cannot be totally sure, I get the feeling that de Jong's film is more realistic in its depiction of young love in 1970s Holland than Paul Verhoeven's classic masterpiece Turks fruit (1973) aka Turkish Delight.  De Jong's film is also notable for being a rare flick that hints that feminism is not the result of members of the so-called fairer sex desiring equality, but quite the opposite.  Indeed, as the feminist character Anette reflects in her hypocritical attraction to exploitative and emotionally abuse men as opposed to stoic gentlemen of the morally righteous sort, feminism is a reaction by women to the emasculation and moral degeneration of men and not because women all of a sudden decided that they wanted to pretend that they have cocks and balls.  Of course, feminism and its promotion of abortion have helped to lead to the death of lifelong relationships in the West.  Indeed, as depicted in Blind Spot, an hour-long trip to the abortion clinic can save both men and women from the responsibility of being a parent, but then again any woman that would pay money to have her unborn child vacuumed out of her vagina while she is fully conscious probably should not have children in the first place.  Either way, de Jong's unexpectedly powerful and memorable little directorial debut is a reminder why divorce has become the norm in the Occident and why certain groups of men like those involved in the so-called ‘MGTOW’ movement have given up on women altogether.

-Ty E

I Can't Sleep

Contrary to popular belief, there have been a number of prolific black serial killers, including the Grim Sleeper, Jake Bird, Anthony Sowell, Andrew Crawford, Lorenzo Gilyard, Wayne Williams, and Carl Eugene Watts (who killed upwards of 100 people), among countless others, and those are just examples of a couple Afro-Americans and do not include negroes from outside the United States. Also, contrary to popular belief, not all serial killers are intelligent as the rather prolific killing career of half-retarded gay drifter Ottis Toole (who was the influence for the character of the same first name in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)) demonstrates. Undoubtedly the French-German-Swiss co-production J'ai pas sommeil (1994) aka I Can’t Sleep aka I'm Not Sleepy directed by French female auteur Claire Denis (Trouble Every Day, White Material) is notable for having the rare distinction of depicting a gay black serial killer who gets his kicks robbing and killing extremely old white and weak women so that he can fund his lavish hedonistic lifestyle. Indeed, loosely based on the true story of Martinique-born mulatto serial killer Thierry Paulin—a curious fellow who ultimately died in prison from AIDS before being convicted of killing upwards of 21 elderly French and Jewish women between 1984 and 1987 with the help of his Afro-Guianan lover Jean-Thierry Mathurin (who was released in early 2009 after serving 18 years)—Denis’ film is ultimately a work that seemingly unwittingly depicts the cultural absurdity of post-colonial Parisian style multiculturalism. Vaguely Altman-esque in its sparsely plotted structure and inclusion a number of intersecting characters that dwell in the same area, I Can’t Sleep is also notable for being, among other things, one of the most plodding and anticlimactic serial killer flickers ever made, which is no surprise considering it was directed by the same director that created the ‘anti-horror’ arthouse effort Trouble Every Day (2001), which pissed off tons of bloodthirsty horror fan-boys, who tend to have limited attention spans and very little tolerance for films that mix nuisance and atmosphere with blood and gore. Indeed, despite the fact that he is a queer negro that does drag shows and kills elderly white women so that he can rob them to fund decidedly decadent cocaine-fueled homo parties, the serial killer of Denis’ film could not be more banal and patently pathetic. Co-penned by Denis’ usual screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau (Chocolat, Pola X), I Can’t Sleep is a truly ‘multicultural’ movie in the sense that virtually every single character is foreign and lives in their own little ethnic realm inside of Paris, with the main characters being Slavs and negroes (and the latter being from ex-colonies). In fact, ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’ in general are depicted as factors that lead to the killer’s murder campaign, as he is a gay negro who is rejected by both his black family and the mainstream white world, thus he is easily able to emotionally detach himself from his aberrant actions. Ironically, some of the people that the killer is most friendly with are old white women, yet his sense of social alienation is so strong and innate, and his resentment and boredom with life is so overwhelming, that he is able to carry out the killing with the ease that most people would put towards using the bathroom or checking their mailbox. A film that, although about 110 minutes long, does not reveal the identity of the killer(s) or a depiction of them carrying out their crimes until an entire hour has passed, I Can’t Sleep is quite possibly the least thrilling and most anti-climatic serial killer flick that has ever been made yet, in a sort of cryptic arthouse way, it ultimately gives more insights into what might lead someone to committing such ungodly crimes than both David Fincher’s SE7EN (1995) and Zodiac (2007) combined.  Of course, then again, the film has about as much to do with serial killers as Altman's Nashville (1975) has to do with country music.

 I Can’t Sleep begins quite inexplicably with a scene that director Denis has described as having no particular narrative function where two police officers flying in a helicopter over Paris laugh hysterically for a reason that is never made apparent to the viewer.  Admittedly, I like to think the cops are laughing about the fact that Paris has become a pathetic multicultural joke, as gay cross-dressing negroes now roam the streets and slaughter old grannies. From there, the viewer is introduced to the strikingly beauteous young quasi-protagonist Daïga (Yekaterina Golubeva of Leos Carax’s Pola X (1999) and Bruno Dumont’s Twentynine Palms (2003)), who has driven from her homeland Lithuania in an ancient Soviet car to Paris where she plans to start a new life, though she does not have any specific plans aside from meeting up with her long lost great-aunt. Almost immediately upon arriving in Paris, Daïga is hassled by two cops for parking in an illegal spot, so she reacts by absurdly saying to one of the officers in Lithuanian, “Clam up, seal dick,” thus indicating that she is a tough little bitch who does not take shit from anyone, especially men, who she seems to have a special feeling of contempt for as her subsequent behavior also surely demonstrates. As Daïga heard on her car radio upon first driving into Paris, a serial killer dubbed by the media as the “Granny Killer” has been strangling to death and robbing elderly women in their apartments.  As depicted various times throughout the film, Daïga constantly hears about the killer via newspaper and radio but she seems like she could not care less, at least until she figures out who the grandma strangler is later by accident and decides to use her secret knowledge to her benefit. Ironically, the serial killer, Camille Moisson (unknown actor Richard Courcet in his first role)—a young gay negro that bears a strikingly resemblance to Jean-Michel Basquiat who is from the Caribbean island of Martinique—lives in a hotel that is flooded with elderly women who he gets along with, thus no one ever suspects he is the killer. 

 Largely owing to the fact that it focuses on no less than three different groups of people that somewhat overlap, I Can’t Sleep has a somewhat sloppy and incoherent storyline, at least at first. A good portion of the film takes place at a third rate hotel owned by a fairly masculine old woman with white hair named Ninon (Line Renaud), who mainly has Slavic tenants and who teaches other elderly woman karate in her free time so that they can protect themselves from the “Granny Killer” while totally oblivious to the fact that he is actually living in her building. Daïga arrives at Ninon’s hotel to reunite with her great-aunt Mina (Irina Grjebina), but when she gets there the old woman does not even recognize her. Of course, as a woman that proudly states, “We stand together. We help one another. We’re Slavs,” Mina instantly embraces Daïga when she informs her that she is her great-niece. In another subplot, the viewer encounters Camille's rampantly heterosexual brother named Theo (Alex Descas of Raoul Peck’s Lumumba (2000) and Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control (2009)), who seems to resent his homo brother and has a toddler mulatto son named ‘Little Harry’ (Ira Mandella-Paul) with an attractive, if not all that sane, white woman named Mona (Béatrice Dalle of Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue (1986) and Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf (2003)).  As man that makes a living building bookshelves and other pieces of furniture for ungrateful middle-class folks that try to scam him out of money, Theo seems to hate white frogs, especially of the bourgeois sort, and wants to move back to Martinique with his girlfriend and their son, but Mona does not want to go, as she could not stomach living in a third world hellhole as she is a spoiled French girl and could not fathom living such a primitive lifestyle. Camille irregularly visits Theo mainly to see his nephew Harry, but it is quite apparent that the two brothers are more or less strangers who have nothing in common aside from the same bloodline. Indeed, Theo hardly suspects that his little bro is the infamous “Granny Killer,” as he wants nothing to do with his brother's personal life, which involves decadent drag performances at gay bars and S&M and bondage photo shoots, among other things that would shame most heterosexual men.

 As a chick that goes to all-male porn theaters just to have a laugh while in a room full of many horny and assumedly masturbating men, Daïga is a somewhat strange little lady who seems to think rather lowly of members of the opposite sex. While her great-aunt manages to land her a job with Ninon cleaning rooms at the hotel, Daïga was hoping to find much more dignified employment with a middle-aged theater director named Abel (played by French hack director Patrick Grandperret in a rare acting role), who invites her on a date and assumedly fucks her, but never gives her a job as he promised he would, which naturally infuriates the character. When Daïga later spots Abel driving around in a fancy convertible, she decides to chase him down and violently crash into him even though she has two passengers in her car, including a Frenchman that she does not know who wants to buy her automobile and a fat and exceedingly effete Slavic queen named Vassili (Tolsty of John Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998)). While Vassili and the Frenchman tell the police that Daïga intentionally crashed into his car, Abel denies it and tells them it is an accident because he knows that he literally and figuratively screwed over the young Slavic babe by not giving her a job like he promised he would. While waiting at the police station after the crash, Daïga notices a police sketch of Camille and his white boyfriend Raphaël (Vincent Dupont of Jaco Van Dormael’s Mr. Nobody (2009)) and realizes that they are the so-called “Granny Killer.”  Of course, as someone that has no allegiance to Paris or elderly French women, Daïga decides to keep her rather valuable information to herself, as she has big plans that will help her get back to her Slavic homeland.

 Indeed, Camille and his bald white beau Raphaël like to gang up on old defenseless women and kill them, with the latter using his charms to trick the victims into letting them into their homes and the former eventually strangling them to death with his bare hands. Due to being a fairly lackluster killer who puts less passion into his murders than he does into taking a leak or putting on a pair of fishnet stockings (which he regularly wears!), Camille forgets to confirm that one of his victims is dead upon strangling her and she ultimately survives and provides his and Raphaël’s physical description to the police. Rather absurdly, aside from a vague sexual dynamic that is only hinted at (the two gay boys attempt to murder one old woman after getting into a fight and making up), the only reason Camille and his boy toy rob and kill old women is so that they can pretend to be rich and opulent and show off to their wealthy fag friends by buying them expensive dinners. Indeed, one of their friends is a very Aryan-looking blond fag (Laurent Grévill) that works as a physician and when Camille buys him an expensive dinner, the good doctor pays him back by buggering his brown bunghole. While the doctor does have enough sense to wash off his prick after penetrating Camille’s man-cunt, he has no clue that the young negro has recently contracted AIDS (ironically, Camille sees the doctor at the hospital and waves to him the same day he finds out that he has contracted gay cancer). Indeed, not unlike French poststructuralist philosopher Michel Foucault, Camille seems to have a sadistic desire to infect as many men with AIDS as possible, as he tells none of his sexual partners about his rather deadly diseased before being buggered by them. Meanwhile, Theo buys his family plane tickets for Martinique, so his girlfriend Mona conspires to steal their son little Harry and run away, as she refuses to leave Paris and certainly will not allow her son to be taken to another country without her. Rather curiously, after realizing that Camille is the killer, Daïga decides to stalk him and eventually hangs out with him at a diner.  In a sick sort of way, Daïga and Camille seem to be sort of kindred spirits who are united in their mutual social alienation from both their foreign subculture and the Paris populous in general.  Ultimately, Camille is caught by the police while walking home one night after watching his brother play violin with a band at a club. While Camille is being arrested, Daïga breaks into his room and steals that money that he has stolen from his victims.  Somewhat curiously, Camille has stuffed all the cash in a trash bag as if it is totally meaningless and worthless to him, thus highlighting the senselessness of his savage crimes. After Camille is arrested, one of the cops mocks him by stating, “Camille…That’s a girl’s name.” When the police interview Theo about his brother, he has no problem admitting to the white cop, “My brother’s a stranger to me, just like you.” As for Camille’s mother, she completely loses it and says to her son while he is being hauled away in handcuffs, “I should have killed you when you left my belly. I’m the one who’s dead! Why did I give birth to you, Satan? Why did you do this to me? You were such a good little boy. . .So kind.” In the end, the film comes full circle, with Daïga driving out of Paris just as she once drove in at the beginning of the film. 

 Ultimately, I Can’t Sleep is a sort of anti-film noir that breaks virtually all of the aesthetic and especially thematic conventions of the American quasi-genre. Indeed, aside from the fact that the police are mostly faceless misanthropic pricks who are hardly portrayed as heroes (notably, one of the cops says to Daïga, “Human beings are animals”), Denis’ film dares to force the viewer to empathize with the killer, who is not revealed to be killer until about an hour into the film for that very reason, as if to trick the unwitting filmgoer into sympathizing with his pathetic plight as a cross-dressing colored boy who enjoys getting manhandled by dapper white dudes. Of course, the film also lacks a femme fatale, at least in the conventional sense, as while Daïga gets to know Camille in a dubious sort of way and then robs him of his money, she never conspired to use her carnal goods to turn a good guy bad like your typical scheming film noir whore. In fact, the most sinister force in I Can’t Sleep is indubitably the city of Paris itself, which is depicted as inspiring the sort of social alienation that leads to some sorry sod like Camille becoming a serial killer and Daïga becoming a thief. While various newspapers are featured throughout the film mentioning the killings, none of the characters really seem to be in any way affected by the granny slayings, hence why it was so easy for Camille and his cocksucking comrade to get away with their dastardly deeds for so long.  In that sense, the film depicts a much darker world than Fritz Lang's M (1931), which features a society that is plagued by an economic depression and rampant criminality where even career criminals, gangsters, and streetwalkers go to the effort of collectively hunting down and capturing the serial killer.  While I am not exactly sure of Denis’ intent and seriously doubt that she has any real nationalistic proclivities, I Can’t Sleep certainly depicts multiculturalism as a sort of corrosive and malignant force of the contra nature and socially autistic sort that inspires apathy, social alienation, and criminality, especially when various different groups are living in their own hermetic worlds and thus feel no loyalty to their neighbors, let alone their city or country. Of course, being an exceedingly effete negro homo, Camille makes for the ultimate socially alienated individual, hence his lack of apathy when it comes to dispatching other human beings, whose lives and emotions mean nothing to him. When Camille’s mother says to him “You were such a good little boy. . .So kind” after being caught, his sense of alienation is only all the more highlighted. Of course, as a homesick negro who incessantly dreams of going to Martinique, Camille's brother Theo also symbolizes one of the many problems with multiculturalism and his mulatto son Harry is symbolic of one of the more extreme results of such an abstract and artificial ‘postmodern’ society, as he is a bastard boy that belongs to no race, culture, or country. I do not think it is a coincidence that Camille develops a special affection for his nephew Harry, as he seems to remind him of himself at a younger age due to his precarious place in the world (notably, unlike the fictional character Camille, the real-life serial killer he was based on, Thierry Paulin, was a mulatto).  Of course, like Denis' greatest works, ranging from her first film Chocolat (1988) to later great works like White Material (2009), I Can't Sleep demonstrates in a fairly socially intricate and refreshingly idiosyncratic way that the French are now paying dearly for their colonial days. In that regard, I think it is quite fitting that there is a shot in the film of a newspaper reading, “France is afraid,” as the country will inevitably be consumed by its so-called multicultural population in a couple decades as events like the Charlie Hebdo shooting hint at.  Indeed, the ‘culturally enriched’ Paris depicted in I Can't Sleep ultimately seems like a far less depressing time, as one homo mulatto granny-slayer is nothing compared to a large Occidental city with a large medieval-minded Muslim population, or as director Denis once stated herself in reference to her film, “...a society and a city work best when [its] links are tight. For me, life is a story of connections – without them society will destruct.” Of course, a society that simultaneously endorses both the growth of a Muslim population and virtually every form of sexual debauchery, especially homosexuality, is nothing short of schizophrenic and ultimately suicidal.

-Ty E