I was pretty excited to get my hands on a copy of TROUBLE EVERY DAY, as I am a fan of Vincent Gallo's works that I've seen so far, and also as a horror fan, this one slipped under my radar. Before I got my copy, I checked a couple reviews and found that opinions were quite mixed regarding this film. After viewing it, I can see why. That's exactly how I felt after sitting through it - mixed...and honestly quite a bit disappointed. On one hand - the story seems interesting and I liked the way that the plot and characters were exposed a little bit at a time...it made everything that transpired in the film feel sort of "mysterious". But by the end, there are too many things unexplained and leaves WAY too much of the content open for interpretation. Being that a good portion of the "backstory" is never adequately explained - I'll give you my take as I understood what was going on (which may not have been very much...):
TROUBLE EVERY DAY tells two parallel stories that intersect because of a past connection. Gallo is in France on his honeymoon. While there, he is also searching for a lost colleague who was working on some unorthodox experiments that are never fully explained. This colleague has a wife who seems mentally disturbed at the onset of the film, that he keeps locked away in the bedroom of their home. It slowly becomes made aware that Gallo and his colleague's wife both suffer from some sort of "condition" that is either a side-effect, or the direct result of the "mysterious" experiments - but I don't know which (or if my interpretation of this is even accurate...), because it's never explained. The only thing that IS obvious by this point, is that the "condition" creates a thirst for blood and flesh that is strongest when the afflicted person is sexually aroused. Gallo continues searching for his colleague (for exactly what purpose is never made entirely clear either...) and instead ends up finding the colleague's wife. Some more confusing things happen upon and after this "meeting", and then the film ends abruptly with no real resolution...
The good thing about TROUBLE EVERY DAY, is that all the way through it, it was really interesting. It's definitely a "slow-burn" kind of film, with very little action (except for 2 or 3 noteworthy scenes) and the storyline is made known only in very small doses - which keeps the film interesting without becoming boring - but this is also the films biggest downfall...you spend all this time watching and trying to unravel the story, but then the end never offers the audience any of the "payoff" that we've been patiently waiting for. There are a few good scenes of sexual violence towards the end, but the film is so infuriatingly vague, that I would have traded those few "cool" scenes for an explanation as to just what the hell was going on. And then the VERY end makes no sense whatsoever and adds absolutely nothing in way of resolution or explanation, unless I missed something pretty damn big - and believe me - my eyes never left the screen. I'm surprised that with the handful of reviews that I've read on here, no one seems to mention the inconsistencies or things that go unexplained in the film. Some say it's boring and needs more gore, some say it's a beautiful art film - but besides all that - where is the god damn story? Why does it just stop at the end with no explanation? How does Gallo's wife put up with him when he's obviously such a freak? This film just brings up way more questions than it ever answers, and that MIGHT be OK if this were JUST an "art-film"...but the narrative and storyline are too strong to dismiss glaring plot holes just by classifying this as an art-film.
I find TROUBLE EVERY DAY hard to rate because I really enjoyed the performances and the story was interesting until the end, but the ending and basic story-telling is so fundamentally flawed that I can't give this film a high rating. I'll settle on a 6/10 (which for me is a pretty low rating for anything in the horror genre...) and to be fair, I would probably have rated it a 9 if the situations leading up to the events that were filmed, and the ending, were explained better (or at all, for that matter...). 6/10
TROUBLE EVERY DAY tells two parallel stories that intersect because of a past connection. Gallo is in France on his honeymoon. While there, he is also searching for a lost colleague who was working on some unorthodox experiments that are never fully explained. This colleague has a wife who seems mentally disturbed at the onset of the film, that he keeps locked away in the bedroom of their home. It slowly becomes made aware that Gallo and his colleague's wife both suffer from some sort of "condition" that is either a side-effect, or the direct result of the "mysterious" experiments - but I don't know which (or if my interpretation of this is even accurate...), because it's never explained. The only thing that IS obvious by this point, is that the "condition" creates a thirst for blood and flesh that is strongest when the afflicted person is sexually aroused. Gallo continues searching for his colleague (for exactly what purpose is never made entirely clear either...) and instead ends up finding the colleague's wife. Some more confusing things happen upon and after this "meeting", and then the film ends abruptly with no real resolution...
The good thing about TROUBLE EVERY DAY, is that all the way through it, it was really interesting. It's definitely a "slow-burn" kind of film, with very little action (except for 2 or 3 noteworthy scenes) and the storyline is made known only in very small doses - which keeps the film interesting without becoming boring - but this is also the films biggest downfall...you spend all this time watching and trying to unravel the story, but then the end never offers the audience any of the "payoff" that we've been patiently waiting for. There are a few good scenes of sexual violence towards the end, but the film is so infuriatingly vague, that I would have traded those few "cool" scenes for an explanation as to just what the hell was going on. And then the VERY end makes no sense whatsoever and adds absolutely nothing in way of resolution or explanation, unless I missed something pretty damn big - and believe me - my eyes never left the screen. I'm surprised that with the handful of reviews that I've read on here, no one seems to mention the inconsistencies or things that go unexplained in the film. Some say it's boring and needs more gore, some say it's a beautiful art film - but besides all that - where is the god damn story? Why does it just stop at the end with no explanation? How does Gallo's wife put up with him when he's obviously such a freak? This film just brings up way more questions than it ever answers, and that MIGHT be OK if this were JUST an "art-film"...but the narrative and storyline are too strong to dismiss glaring plot holes just by classifying this as an art-film.
I find TROUBLE EVERY DAY hard to rate because I really enjoyed the performances and the story was interesting until the end, but the ending and basic story-telling is so fundamentally flawed that I can't give this film a high rating. I'll settle on a 6/10 (which for me is a pretty low rating for anything in the horror genre...) and to be fair, I would probably have rated it a 9 if the situations leading up to the events that were filmed, and the ending, were explained better (or at all, for that matter...). 6/10