Father Geek here to tell you it looks like Doctor SOTHA's captors have loosened their bounds somewhat... we expect him home in South Africa soon... a relief to Head Nurse Hollis I'm sure... no more performing her duties thru those cold iron bars for one thing...
Last night I performed Marvin Gaye's 'I heard it through the Grapevine' for the prison owner. He liked it so much, he let me live for another day. Tomorrow he wants me to try out the Creedence Clearwater Revival version. Who knew the French were big on 60's Motown? So anyway, DR.SOTHA here still alive for the time-being in a Nice Prison Cell. As painful as the buttered croissants are to digest, I cast my mind back to day 2 of the Cannes Film Festival. What at first looked like a fairly simple day of watching films and pitching my lizard experiment to Harvey Weinstein, soon turned into a surreal nightmare, the like of which my lizard and I wish to never experience again. Cue soft focus flashback as I regress to the day the earth stood still.
The Les Ambassadier Hotel in Juan Les Pins. Harry and I get up at the crack of dawn. No time for breakfast as Harry gets ready to trek up some mountain to the official Lord of the Rings castle, where interviews will be conducted with the cast and crew. Before Harry can say anything, I say, 'I'd rather not, Liv Tyler got pissed off with me when I told her about Alexandra DuPont.' Harry responds quizzically, 'rather not what?' 'You know', I say, 'like come with you, just not my thing, I'd just take away from the whole spectacle'. Before I leave Harry, he says, 'you don't know Liv Tyler do you.' I say, 'I used to think I did, but she's a completely different person now'. Harry gives me a 'what the fuck' look. I wink back at him, thinking he'll get it in about 5 minutes. 'I'd rather not talk about this now, it's history, you can't dwell on history, I'll see you later Harry.' Harry still has that 'what the fuck' look plastered on his face.
I have to get from Juan Les Pins to Cannes, and you know for damn sure I aint taking another cab. I ask Rita Hayworth/Kathy Bates mutation at reception if there's a train station in the area. 'Ofcourse, here ees a map to get you started. Eeets only 5 minutes walk'. 'Uhuh, 5 minutes you say, we'll see about that.' I snatch the map from her, and waltz out of the hotel. The map looks nothing like France; oh sure all the street names are the same, but what's up with these cryptic bone and dagger icons? When I get to the station, all the officials stare maniacally back at me. I go up to the ticket booth, 'return ticket to Cannes, please'. The official looks across at his superiors and offers a perplexing nod. 'Yes, Mister.', 'SOTHA, DR.SOTHA, but I don't see what that has to do with it.' He produces the ticket. I put my hand across to take it, but he holds on. We tug at both ends. 'Hey'. 'Mister DR.SOTHA is it, we were expecting you.' He lets go of the ticket, and I stumble over. 'Enjoy your ride, sir'. I pull out my needle and say, 'If any of you fuckers come near me, I'll spike you.' They start surrounding me like that Michael Jackson 'Thriller' video. Just then a horn blasts, and a few French locals walk through the gate. The officials get back to whatever fake job they were doing. I run through the gate and hop onto the French express. What just happened?
On the way to Cannes, I see a man lurking in the back of the compartment. He wears a fedora with a beige trench coat. Who wears a beige trench coat in the middle of summer? It's quite clear he's eyeing me. As the train comes to a stop at the Cannes station, I give him the finger. The sick fuck proceeds to blow me a kiss. I harry myself through the station, and end up running down the streets, past the Hotel Gray D'Albion to the Riviera like a madman. I look around, and grab hold of the nearest person next to me, a professional porn actress. Paranoid I scream into her ear, 'A man with.a trench coat.beige.blew me a kiss.on the train'. 'Hey honey, I don't know about any man with a trench coat, but you sure look fine.' 'What, Jesus, is everybody in this town on drugs.' I run to the Palais. I look around, no sign of the stranger. Looks like I lost him. I enter the press registration office, and decide to put this whole misadventure behind me. Probably just hallucinated half of it. Yeah that's right, crazy me, gave myself a drop of lizard mescaline to pep me up in the morning, and it's obviously gone straight to my head.
The lady behind the accreditation counter looks like Jack Palance, only more masculine. 'Hi, yes, ummm, sorry had a weird morning, never take mescaline in the morning.' 'Excuse me sir' she says as if not understanding my tip. 'Forget it, I'm here to pick up my press pass, I'm with Aintitcool.' 'Sorry, we don't serve Heineken at the press counter'. 'What?! No A-I-N-T-I-T-C-O-O-L, here to pick up press pass.' 'Just one minute' she says in a rasping Linda Blair voice, and disappears behind the door. I wait for about 10 minutes before she returns. 'Yes, I'm afraid we can't give you one.' 'What, why not?' 'Your application was rejected'. 'On what grounds' I say furiously. 'Anyone who takes mescaline in the morning is banned from the event.' 'What, the mescaline comment, it was a joke.' 'Not the way you said it Sir, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do.' I think of saying, 'you don't intimidate me with your Jack Palance stare', but think better of it. I walk out ready to throw in the towel. Just then I bump into beige trench coat wearing stranger. 'Shit this mescaline is really kicking in', I say deliriously. The stranger sucker punches me, and I'm out.
I come to in an empty theater. High columns, Victorian corners, very old guard in this cramped 50 seater. I hear a voice from the top of the projection booth. 'So you finally woke up Mister.' 'SOTHA, DR.SOTHA, what's going on here?,' I say nervously. 'I'm afraid we have to keep you until our boss gets back in 102 minutes, just enough time to show you this.', he flicks on the projector and an image casts itself upon the screen:
TROUBLE EVERY DAY By Claire Denis
What are these renegades up to? There are rumours going round, that this is a pretty interesting film. So I look back at the projection booth, and shout nonchalantly, 'Thanks guys, I'll be with you after this then.' I thought that must really screw with their brains. Anyway onto the film.
The film takes place in a slightly.make that completely subversive Paris. It takes you through the seedy underbelly of the city, starkly contrasting any romanticised inclinations you may have of the place prior to watching the film. I'll lay the opaque plot to you on a plate:
Shane (a scruffy looking Vincent Gallo - contradiction in terms I know) and June (Tricia Vessey) fly from Denver to Paris for their honeymoon. Shane has an anxiety attack on the plane, presumably to insinuate the horrors to come. They check into their hotel, and Shane proceeds to call a lab technician who is casually dissecting a brain. The guy tells him to call back. Shane throughout the entire film is searching for someone. Why? We have no idea until the last scene. June's body presents a carnal and appetising invocation in Shane. He sees her naked body in the tub, and wants to devour her (and not in the way you think.) His ravenous desire spills over when he eats a chambermaid. What illicits this cannibalistic obligation, we don't know. Meanwhile, there's a seductive young woman, Core (Beatrice Dalle), who picks up a trucker off the highway. During sexual interplay, she murders him. A while later, she's picked up by a black man (Alex Descas) and dungeoned in his commodious vicarage. Turns out the black man is Doctor Semeneau. He sets off for work the next day, and leaves Dalle locked up in a bedroom. Why? We don't know. Could it be a foreboding subtext of sexual repressiveness gone wrong? We don't know. Some youths then break into the house in his absence. She ends up feeding on them. How this contributes to the narrative? We have no idea. Is there a pay-off? Maybe, but I must have missed it. After much exploitative cannibalistic and sexual encounters, we finally realise that Shane was trying to track down Doctor Semeneau, because the dude had disappeared with his research paper. What can I say, this is as coherent a synopsis as I can offer on this film.
I like Vincent Gallo at the worst of times. This is almost certainly the worst of times. At least he's consistent when picking his projects: always obscure, minimalist endeavours that inevitably escape the mainstream, and sometimes even the repertoire theatres. His directorial debut, BUFFALO 66, is a gloriously acerbic semi-autobiographical look at a dysfunctional family, and the offspring it creates between him and Christina Ricci's character. I loved it, but always found it hard to convert the cynics. His work with Abel Ferrara has always complimented his grotesque tendencies. He's not bad in this, it's just that, well, no one is particularly good in this film. He's the best of the worst, and that's as good a compliment I can give him. Gallo wades through this film glum and plaintive. You wonder if he got screwed out of royalties for the film and resolved to play this 'by the numbers'. There's nothing particularly striking about his work in this film, it's the same kind of stuff, only he's in a different country.
Tricia Vessey is hot. Tricia Vessey gets completely nude in this film. I hope that's enough for all of you, because that's as much entertainment as she offers in 'Trouble Every Day'. I can't really tell if she has any acting ability, because she rarely says much and looks like she's been pumped with way too much Valium (much like all the other characters.) I was literally shouting at the screen at points for her to say something (long beat) anything. It was like those over-dramatic pauses in 'Meet Joe Black' between Pitt and Hopkins. I want to make a plea to all writers to 'beat' the beat. A beat should be reserved for a pivotal turning point in a film or a crucial dramatic moment, and NOT some mundane sequence, where it is rendered futile.
Beatrice Dalle is also hot. I'll give her this: she's in a sex scene in the beginning that's worth watching. She also gets in on the cannibal act, in a sickly scene where she dines on some housebreakers. Well done Beatrice, and in your next film let's try acting.
Of all the people responsible for this mess, the one I'm most disappointed with is Claire Denis - the director. What were you thinking? Your previous films 'I Can't Sleep' and 'Nénette et Boni' are beautiful portraits of working class/street life in village pockets around France. For those who don't know, Denis was born in Paris but grew up in Africa as the daughter of a civil servant. She was always the quintessential outsider, and understood the psychology behind such characters better than any other contemporary French filmmaker. Arguably her best film was her last one, 'Beau Travail' (Good Work) about the waves made by a newcomer in a society of outsiders who have created their own world, adapted from Herman Melville's book 'Billy Budd.' In lyrical detail it looked at the physical rituals of military life in a French Foreign Legion outpost in East Africa. It's a stirring exploration of moral and social values. The haunting silences in the narrative lent the film a foreboding quality of destruction. With 'Trouble Every Day' you have completely abused this technique, and it offers nothing emotionally or psychologically. Worse still, is the sterile cinematography by the usually reliable Agnès Godard. It has no texture or style in its execution. I mean you're making a film with gratuitous sex and cannibalism, at least compliment this visually. But nooo, you had to shoot this little abortion with no impressionable design. If 'Hannibal' was shot in this way, you'd be asleep before Verger made his appearance. Why, oh why did you disappoint me, Claire? I don't even know what you're trying to say in this film. It took me about 5 hours to write that obscure synopsis. I checked out IMDB and they have this up as the tagline: "In an X-Files style mixed with Parisienne angst, a few good men and women seek to expose the strange secret behind a series of government (?) experiments that may be turning otherwise-decent Parisians into bona-fide cannibals. " Is that what you were trying to do? Was I watching the same film? Are the men who have kidnapped me your PR agents?
The credits roll and the lights come up. I look back up at the projection booth, and a voice bellows through the loudspeaker belonging to Big Bossman, "DR.SOTHA we all hoped you enjoyed it. We just need you to sign a form that verifies that you were the first person to screen this print." A lady then comes down, and offers me a paper that has the words I TAMPER THE PRINT - TROUBLE EVERY DAY. What the fuck does that mean I think to myself. 'Just sign at the bottom and you're a free man.' 'I'm free if I sign that thing?' 'That is correct.' With my lizard crawling into a foetal position in my pocket (not a good sign) and myself getting increasingly paranoid, I sign the form and run down the aisle to freedom.
In retrospect this was the wrong thing to have done. As the story goes (reported by all the trade papers the following day) Claire Denis's 'Trouble Every Day' was having its premiere a mere hour after my screening. After all the luminaries packed the theatre at the Palais, the projectionist informed the mass of attendees that the print had been damaged. Denis burst into tears.her big moment ruined at the most inopportune of times. How embarrassing for all concerned. What the trade papers (thankfully) decided against mentioning, was that every cataclysm has a scapegoat. For all intense and purposes, I - DR.SOTHA, was made the patsy. After word spread that the authorities had linked the irregularity to a very dangerous and cunning African Doctor (I'll put that on my resume thank you very much) through a signed confession, all the pieces began to fall into place. Seems the people who had me followed all the way from the station, were a renegade group of filmmakers pissed at Denis for not helping them out in industry circles. They chose me, because - in their minds - I had the perfect motive and would end up being the perfect decoy. Firstly, I was African, and secondly, I had done some time in Tunisia right around the time Denis was shooting Travail. There were rumours that someone had tried to flame the set during the shoot, but had never been caught. Naturally, the authorities would think that that 'someone' was me, and that I held some personal grudge against Denis. For the record, the only grudge I hold against Denis is that she had made a disappointing film in 'Trouble Every Day.' Those renegades had done their homework. My remaining days at Cannes were wrought with paranoia and mistrust, with the authorities issuing an APB out on my arrest.
When I got back to the hotel and told Harry about the hideous chain of events, all he seemed bothered about was Christopher Lee's exploits in the war. I'm shouting at Harry, 'and then this big mutherfucking dude in a trench-coat sucker punches me, and I find myself in a deserted theater.'. Harry starts to intercede my story by saying, 'It's amazing how this period in Christopher Lee's life has foreshadowed his work in the arts.' Defeated I tell Harry not to tell anyone that he knows me, or for that matter, that I am staying with him. Harry agrees and continues with his Christopher Lee findings.
