Robert Pat­tin­son to have ​“sex­u­al expe­ri­ences” in space

At the 2017 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, French mae­stro Claire Denis pre­sent­ed her new film, Let the Sun­shine In, and it left audi­ences swoon­ing in its wake. Yet this wasn’t the film that has been the top­ic of fevered con­ver­sa­tion for the last cou­ple of years – more some­thing she did while wait­ing for her mas­sive­ly ambi­tious sci-fi project, High Life, to come to fruition.

The cast for this pro­posed genre epic has been locked and loaded for a while now, with Patri­cia Arquette, Mia Goth and Robert Pat­tin­son all signed up and rar­ing to go. Pat­tin­son in par­tic­u­lar appears to be on a major roll at the moment, work­ing with some of the worlds best (if not most com­mer­cial­ly-mind­ed) direc­tors, and deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al work for all of them.

It comes as lit­tle sur­prise that Denis would be on his world auteur bin­go card, and it seems that she’s got just the right project for him as a star­ring vehicle.

High Life, whose script boasts the involve­ment of nov­el­ist Zadie Smith, is being pitched as a cere­bral sci-fi about a ship hurtling towards a black hole. We’re guess­ing that it will cleave to con­ven­tion in the same way that her sin­gu­lar Trou­ble Every Day, from 2001, did to the tra­di­tion­al vam­pire movie (hint: it didn’t at all).

Via our friends at The Film Stage, they unearthed this lit­tle gem from an inter­view Pat­tin­son gave to Cahiers du Cin­e­ma while in Cannes with some tan­ta­lis­ing details on High Life’s plot and themes.

“The movie will take place in the future, the char­ac­ter is an astro­naut. He’s a crim­i­nal who vol­un­teers for a mis­sion toward a black hole, but he realis­es along the way that a doc­tor on board wants to do sex­u­al expe­ri­ences with humans in space … [laughs] It’s a very strange film. I had not thought about it for some time, but Claire talked to me about it here in Cannes, and she showed me some image tests of space, com­plete­ly crazy. I love Claire, I can’t believe I’m going to work with her, espe­cial­ly for a sci­ence fic­tion project. It’s going to be very beautiful.”

Yep, you read that right, ​“sex­u­al expe­ri­ences” in space. It’s going to be a mad one. And with shoot­ing start­ing immi­nent­ly in Poland, here’s hop­ing that it’ll be ready for Cannes next year, and fes­ti­val direc­tor Thier­ry Fré­maux won’t have devel­oped some mea­gre excuse not to have it front and cen­tre of the main competition.

Mean­while, Let the Sun­shine In opens in France this Octo­ber, and will hope­ful­ly make its way to the UK short­ly after. Read our first-look review from Cannes here.