Yesterday The Playlist highlighted Clair Denis’ upcoming 35 Shots of Rum (original French title 35 Rhums) which we now know features a score by the smoky, low-slung English band Tindersticks. Early reviews have praised the film, which was already on my fall watch list due to pedigree alone. Variety’s Venice coverage says the film “may appear whisper-thin on the surface,
yet it’s marvelously profound, illuminating the love between a father
and daughter but also highlighting the difficulty of relinquishing what
most people spend a lifetime putting into place,” and positively notes the use of music, including Tindersticks songs.
This isn’t the first time that Denis has sourced a score from the troubadours. Nenette and Boni made good use of the band, and her brilliant, unfortunately scorned Trouble Every Day was anchored and even humanized by the Tindersticks score which brought deep Nick Cave piano together with ominous and plaintive strains reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driver score. Like so:
Tindersticks, ‘Room 321’ from Trouble Every Day (alt link)
The (possibly NSFW, depending upon your job) trailer for Trouble Every Day is below, albeit with rather terrible sound. Use the embedded song players above to hear what the music should sound like. I’ve meant to write an in-depth piece about this one for ages, despite two fairly good takes from Salon and Walter Chaw. There is no R1 disc of the film available (never has been, to the best of my knowledge) but you can probably score the region-free Hong Kong disc cheap, as I did, from a joint like DDDHouse. It’s worth it.