Trouble Every Day

American scientist Dr Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo) travels to Paris for his honeymoon. Unbeknownst to his new wife, he has an ulterior motive: To track down an old colleague and his wife (Beatrice Dalle), hoping desperately that the Frenchman has discovered a cure for the vampire/cannibal tendencies that assert themselves whenever Shane gets sexually aroused…

Slow moving, obtuse, elliptical and laden with portentous – or mock portenous – scenes, it's hard to know how to take Trouble Every Day, the latest film from the director of Chocolat and Beau Travail, Claire Denis.

Is it a bold example of crossover filmmaking – the arthouse meets the grindhouse – or an obviously talented director slumming it and intruding onto the natural territory of such dubious Eurotrash auteurs as Jean Rollin (Shock of the Vampires and The Living Dead Girl and Jesus Franco?

Are Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle really acting or just shoe-ins in roles that don't require them do do anything except look utterly wasted? Was Gallo trying to imitate Jack Taylor in Franco's Female Vampire or impersonate John Holmes? What the hell has Dalle done to herself since Betty Blue?

And, to paraphrase Bataille, is one laughing because one is afraid?