High Life

2019 science fiction movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Prisoners on a spaceship head toward a black hole.

This spaceship is either heading very very slowly toward a black hole or, since it's probably moving faster than humans have ever moved, very very quickly. I think the way a person thinks about the speed of the spaceship will likely decide whether a person likes this movie or hates it. It seems fairly divisive.

Claire Denis doesn't seem all that interested in a narrative here, and I'm struggling to piece together what it all means. Denis might not even know, and she doesn't make it easy with the fragmented storytelling. The chronology aboard this spaceship of prisoners is busted up and scrambled, and there are also some flashbacks of the pre-ship days, including one with a scientist being interviewed on a train which offers up the cleanest bit of narrative exposition.

What is easy to latch onto here are the visuals. This is a good-looking sci-fi movie filled with all these seemingly incongruous shots--a makeshift crib, a lush garden. There are drifting bodies in endless voids, lots and lots of fluids, and Juliette Binoche spending time in something called a "fuckbox." And seriously, do I really need anything else in a movie if there's an extended sequence of Juliette Binoche in a fuckbox? I really doubt it. You also get something called spaghettification which is grotesque and beautiful.

Juliette Binoche's character is referred to as the "Shaman of Sperm" at one point. She's as great as she usually is, this long black hair making her a kind of witchy woman. And Robert Pattinson continues his run of choosing really interesting projects.

No, I don't understand this movie, but it's one I couldn't stop thinking about and one that I had no trouble feeling. It bounced around in me enough that I'm pretty sure there's a part of me in there that understood the thing.

I have to catch up with Claire Denis, so maybe a Claire Denis Fest needs to happen. I've only seen this and 35 Shots of Rum. I'm definitely intrigued.