Claire Denis pre­pares new film with Robert Pat­tin­son and Mar­garet Qualley

It would appear that Claire Denis has got­ten a taste of celebri­ty and would like some more. Dur­ing the release of her most recent film High Life, she often remarked on the press trail how launch­ing a film with Robert Pat­tin­son in the lead was unlike any­thing she’d done before in her career; a con­stant stream of head­lines, glob­al press atten­tion, hordes of scream­ing girls wher­ev­er they went.

But it must have all gone pret­ty well, because she’s sent her­self back into that par­tic­u­lar spot­light by cast­ing Pat­tin­son once again in her next film. Dead­line had the exclu­sive yes­ter­day that Pat­tin­son and Mar­garet Qual­ley have already been tapped for the upcom­ing polit­i­cal thriller/​romance The Stars at Night.

The film will send Pat­tin­son and Qual­ley to Nicaragua cir­ca 1984, a time when the San­din­ista rebel forces had risen up and over­thrown the colo­nial Span­ish dic­ta­tor­ship rul­ing their nation. Pat­tin­son will play a ​“mys­te­ri­ous Eng­lish busi­ness­man” and Qual­ley a ​“head­strong Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist,” and have no fear – they will indeed fall in love. But lies, dis­trust, and dan­ger con­spire against them as they set a course to flee the increas­ing­ly unsta­ble country.

This sounds like wheel­house ter­ri­to­ry for Denis, who’s tack­led the lin­ger­ing impe­ri­al­ist influ­ence of the West­ern world in trop­i­cal ter­ri­to­ries on mul­ti­ple occa­sions in the past. (Could this be a new Beau Tra­vail?) Bet­ter still, she’s round­ed up a strong sta­ble of col­lab­o­ra­tors to bring this to the­aters, includ­ing Denis-friend­ly stu­dio A24 along with co-screen­writ­ers Léa Mysius – she worked on Arnaud Desplechin​‘s last two films, and Andrew Lit­vack, who also helped with the High Life script.

When the world will actu­al­ly see this film is, like a space sta­tion full of death-row inmates engag­ing in increas­ing­ly abstract sex­u­al exper­i­men­ta­tion, still up in the air. The Dead­line item men­tions that Pat­tin­son will have to first com­plete his oblig­a­tions to the new Bat­man vehi­cle, which places Denis’ next work some­where in 2021 or 2022. No mat­ter, though – it will, in all like­li­hood, be worth the wait.