In the flashback—you know, the scene Vincent Gallo remembers when he’s resting on his hotel bed—that female doctor asks Gallo, “You had an affair with her, didn’t you?” He says, “It wasn’t quite like that.” [laughs] That scene looks like it was shot on 16-millimeter. It’s incongruous with the rest of the film, so for it to be there, it has to have a purpose.
And everything leading up to it is building on this particular mood that I can’t define. Before the movie explains how the different characters are connected, we sense they’re under the sway of the same spell. (I Can’t Sleep works this way too, presenting Yekaterina Golubeva’s Lithuanian immigrant and the brothers from Martinique played by Descas and Richard Courcet as being on parallel, but discrete, tracks.) Whatever it is, it’s creating this atmosphere of sexual temptation and dread. And it’s spreading out to the lives of peripheral characters, like the maid at the hotel where Gallo’s staying. She seems to be motivated by something, but I’m not sure what she contributes to the film apart from ending up as Gallo’s victim.
- Beatrice Dalle in Trouble Every Day
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Perhaps they have and something about it isn’t satisfactory for him. There are no scenes of them making love, but there are two scenes of him masturbating. I got the idea that he couldn’t achieve orgasm with another person unless there’s bloodletting.
- Tricia Vessey and Vincent Gallo in Trouble Every Day
Without selling her short as a filmmaker, filmmaking is a collaborative medium. I’m sure Godard influences Denis’s choice of images.
There’s another point where Wood says that she’s not at all judgmental of her characters.
Katerina Golubeva in I Can’t Sleep
Richard Courcet as Camille in I Can’t Sleep
