Hardcore Desires: Subverting softcore vampirism in Trouble Every Day
By Sam Moore
It’s no wonder that, for a moment, vampires were all the rage among teen romance. Their immortality can keep them (looking) sixteen forever; they’re brooding, romantic in an edgy and gothic kind of way, and, most importantly, they’re associated with sex, but not in a way that’s too explicitly sexual. Vampirism itself is obviously an act that’s loaded with sexual undertones; someone coming into your room at the dead of night, placing their lips on your neck, and marking you as theirs. It’s sexual - maybe even a little sexy if that’s what you’re into - but always in a way that feels softcore, palatable, almost as if it sidesteps the inherent monstrosity of turning someone into a vampire. The gothic roots of the vampire feel romantic. The castles lost in fog, the burden of immortality, and the desire to find someone you can literally be with forever. But Claire Denis’ Trouble Every Day (2001) takes these ideas of the vampire myth - the gothic romance, the software seduction of vampirism - and subverts them, turning her vampires into monstrous creatures with bloodstained, hardcore desires.
Trouble Every Day is also rooted in very traditional ideas of romance: it follows a couple on their honeymoon in Paris, and the film’s opening shots - silent, striking images of Paris streets - are loaded with romance and possibility. There’s even something a little romantic about parts of Trouble Every Day, but, like so many other parts of the film, they’re twisted and covered in blood. Even Denis’ vampires aren’t quite vampires in the traditional sense; they’re born out of science - experimental treatments on libido - instead of mythology, and the typical traits of the classical vampire (being confined to darkness, not being able to come into a room without an invitation) are absent here. The vampires here sometimes don’t feel like vampires at all, but cannibals. Instead, Denis zeroes in on the core of the vampire: vampirism. The film is a slow burn - like a seduction - there’s very little explicit vampirism until the film’s final act and once it gets there, the monsters are unleashed, and everything that the film works toward is revealed in horrific, masterful fashion.
The vampires in Trouble Every Day are the result of the scientific meddling of Léo Semenau (Alex Descas), and one of these vampires is his wife, Coré (Béatrice Dalle). Their relationship is fascinating; strained yet intimate. She’s locked in her room during the day, in fear of the things that she could do if she were able to roam free. Like so many aspects of Trouble Every Day, Coré is a fascinating subversion; on the surface she feels like a kind of fairytale princess, locked in a room by a male figure of power and authority. But she isn’t inherently weak, or even a prisoner; she seems to agree that this is where she should be, only trying to break out when she sees young men that she can seduce and devour. One of the most striking images in Trouble Every Day is rooted in the marriage between Léo and Coré. After she’s claimed the life of another victim, he washes the blood off her body; it’s intimate, almost beautiful, a continued challenge of what it means to be a monster and a vampire.
Scenes of sex and vampirism are among the most powerful in Trouble Every Day. The two young men who try to break into Coré’s sealed-up house earlier in the film succeed, and one of them ends up being seduced by her. While he tears down the door that keeps them apart and she constantly tries to kiss him, the camera focuses on her mouth, showing it as something both seductive and terrifying. When the two of them go to bed, the difference between Denis’ vampires and the rest of the mythos are made most explicit. Her hand moves along his body, rests on his chest, his neck; it feels like it’s ripped straight from F.W. Muranu’s Nosferatu (1922), with Denis literally drawing on - and then violently subverting - the common image of the vampire. Count Orlock (Max Schreck) is a fascinating version of the monstrous vampire - not as brooding as Christopher Lee (Horror of Dracula, 1958 – and so many more), or sumptuously gothic as Gary Oldman (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1992)- he looks like a monster but acts in a way that’s more softcore, delicate in its seduction. Coré is a direct inversion of this: she looks average, human, beautiful, but the impact of her vampirism means that her sexuality is violent and monstrous. In her seduction scene, the moment of penetration is explicit, and it becomes clear as the scene goes on that it’s the act of sex that awakens her more vampiric side. The camera moves in extreme closeups, showing fragments of bodies; obsessed with mouth, teeth, and neck. Before she begins to truly devour her prey/partner, it seems like she’s just kissing his neck. But after sinking her teeth in and drawing blood, there’s a moment of intimacy with his corpse. The way she lies there, breathing ragged, kissing him, both bloodstained is, for a strange, horrific moment, almost beautiful.
Turning someone into a vampire often reads as an act of sexual violence. It’s rare for a character to consent to being turned - again, the brooding not-quite-sexual nature of vampires in romance tend to challenge this and, like so many other aspects of vampirism, this is made explicit in Trouble Every Day. The climax of the film is centered around the revelation that Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo), a scientist who has a history and obsession with Léo and Coré, is also a vampire. It’s hinted at throughout the film; his refusal to have sex with his wife, his obsessive desire to find Léo.
There’s a nameless woman who works in the hotel where Shane and his wife are staying, and when he sees her, he assaults her. His seduces - if that’s the right word - in the same way as Coré; through imposing body language, there’s always the spectre of violence, and what might seem consensual to begin with transforms into a violent sexual assault. It’s this shift that reveals Shane’s own transformation; the monster that was always there finding its way to the surface. There’s sex, blood, screaming, and one of the film’s most infamous images where Shane looks up after going down on his victim, with bloodstained lips. Here, vampirism isn’t just teeth on your neck in a sprawling gothic castle; it’s sexual assault, literally devouring another person. These vampires are too monstrous, too hungry, to only bite the neck. Like more traditional vampires, Shane is lonely too; but it isn’t immortality that makes him lonely, it’s his monstrosity. After the assault, there’s a scene where he washes the bloodstains from his body, and the difference here compared to the scenes with Léo and Coré reveals just how lonely this kind of (un)life is.
Trouble Every Day is a film about hunger. For knowledge, for love, for salvation. For bodies and blood and insatiable desire. Shane’s marriage is clearly doomed by the time the film ends; the gulf between them is one that June (Tricia Vessey) is unable to cross. When she walks into the bathroom after his shower, she sees drops of blood in the curtain. This moment, this image, captures the loneliness of Denis’ vampire/cannibals, revealing the emotional and physical cost of what it means to offer yourself up to another person. The gothic beauty and implicit sexuality that defines so much of vampirism on film is all turned on its head in Trouble Every Day. The beauty of Paris in the film’s opening shots is offset by the violence and loneliness of a bloodstained shower curtain; seduction becomes assault, and humans become monsters.
Sam Moore is a writer, artist, and editor. Their work has been published by the LA Review of Books, i-D, the BFI, and other places. They are one of the founding editors of Powder, a queer zine of art and literature.Their first book, All my teachers died of AIDS, was published by Pilot Press in December of 2020.
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