Claire Denis: ​‘Robert wrote to me say­ing that he nev­er expect­ed me to be such a punk’

The British stand-up come­di­an Stew­art Lee has a bit in which he grum­bles that the inter­net has ruined record shop­ping. For him, it was all about the thrill of the chase. He cher­ished the roman­tic notion of rifling through the bins in some dusty store run by a can­tan­ker­ous old git in the hope that a long yearned-for gem would sud­den­ly present itself, like hap­pen­ing across buried treasure.

Tech­nol­o­gy has made this jour­ney feel less mag­i­cal, as it’s now pos­si­ble to tap the title of a record into a search engine and have it mailed to you overnight. It’s prac­ti­cal, yes, but you lose the feel­ing of hav­ing grap­pled for this art – of prof­fer­ing some basic phys­i­cal exer­tion that, in some minis­cule way, might mir­ror the exer­tions the artist under­took in the sub­lime act of cre­ation. Some might argue that this brave new world allows for inclu­siv­i­ty and diver­si­ty. Every­one can see and hear every­thing instant­ly. But those peo­ple have nev­er tak­en two trains and a bus in the hope that they might score some dis­count­ed Steely Dan rar­i­ties at a vil­lage record fair.

I had a sim­i­lar rela­tion­ship with film in the 1990s and ear­ly 2000s. Even though I con­cede that home media and dig­i­tal stream­ing have allowed me to sam­ple a far broad­er range of cin­e­ma than I might oth­er­wise have been able to, the mem­o­ries of those semi-epic jour­neys to one-off rep screen­ings are the ones that remain the most stead­fast and lucid in my mind. Claire Denis’ 1999 film Beau Tra­vail was a water­shed moment for me – a pri­vate screen epiphany that altered my out­look on the func­tion, appli­ca­tion and emo­tive capac­i­ty of art.

At that time, there were only five ter­res­tri­al TV chan­nels and, con­se­quent­ly, a small­er lot of broad­cast­ing real estate had to cater to a far more expan­sive range of tastes. For a teenag­er forcibly attempt­ing to broad­en his hori­zons, Chan­nel 4’s after hours pro­gram­ming slots – allied with a gift for being able to func­tion the timer on an Aiwa VHS recorder – meant that a small boun­ty of sub­ti­tled for­eign lan­guage cin­e­ma was mine for the taking.

My view­ing, how­ev­er, was dic­tat­ed by the whims of broad­cast­ers, which often extend­ed to mid­dle­brow or com­mer­cial­ly pop­u­lar hits from con­ti­nen­tal Europe (France main­ly) and occa­sion­al­ly Asia. Among my taped-off-TV hold­ings were Claude Sautet’s Un Coeur en Hiv­er, with Emmanuelle Béart as a meek vio­lin vir­tu­oso, André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds, about bur­geon­ing teenage sex­u­al­i­ty, and Bertrand Tavernier’s L.627, a flinty chron­i­cle of Parisian nar­cotics cops at work.

When I reached the point where I could no longer rely on the errat­ic nature of TV sched­ul­ing, I start­ed head­ing out to the cin­e­ma. At this point, watch­ing sub­ti­tled films was some­thing of a pre­ten­tious nov­el­ty, and allowed for cer­tain brag­ging rights in the school­yard (which were often rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed with a mild beat­ing or ver­bal scold­ing). But these movies end­ed up being a kind of gate­way drug towards some­thing more mean­ing­ful and consciousness-expanding.

My favourite cin­e­ma in Lon­don was called the Renoir, and it was owned by the art­house film dis­trib­u­tor Artif­cial Eye (it has now been remod­elled and rebrand­ed as the Cur­zon Blooms­bury, and is run by Cur­zon, essen­tial­ly the same com­pa­ny). I fell into the habit of vis­it­ing the Renoir on a near-week­ly basis, hap­py to watch what­ev­er was show­ing, which was near­ly always a title plucked from Artif­cial Eye’s stel­lar cat­a­logue. The film pages of Time Out mag­a­zine act­ed as a guid­ing light, as they tend­ed to lav­ish col­umn inch­es on what they con­sid­ered the best releas­es, regard­less of size or provenance.

So there were trips to find out what­ev­er Late August, Ear­ly Sep­tem­ber was, and whether Olivi­er Assayas was some­one I should be keep­ing tabs on. I got my first sam­ple of Isabelle Hup­pert in Claude Chabrol’s mid­dling late work, Mer­ci Pour la Choco­lat. I was not quite ready for Raoul Ruiz’s impres­sion­is­tic take on Mar­cel Proust’s ​‘Time Regained’. Yet the one that changed every­thing was Beau Tra­vail, as it was the first time I was able to grasp the notion that com­plex­i­ty is not always achieved through the com­plex treat­ment of mate­r­i­al – often, the less you say, the less you show, the less you attempt to insid­i­ous­ly plant an idea in the viewer’s mind, the more you are able to reap the inter­pre­tive rewards of poet­ic brevity.

This was also the first time my appre­ci­a­tion of the mak­er sat on equal peg­ging with the art­work itself. So this wasn’t just a great film, it was a great film by a great artist. This was film as per­son­al expres­sion, ripped from the heart. My inner auteurist was born. I returned the fol­low­ing week to see the film again and, despite it run­ning dia­met­ri­cal­ly counter to my music tastes at the time, I pur­chased a CD sin­gle of Corona’s ​‘The Rhythm of the Night’, which famous­ly plays over the clos­ing credits.

The suc­cess of Beau Tra­vail meant that Denis’ 1989 debut film, Choco­lat, based on her upbring­ing in Cameroon, was giv­en anoth­er run-out, so I was able to catch up with that too. And I loved it. Two years lat­er, and after much breath­less dis­ap­proval by the crit­i­cal press, Denis’ fol­lowup film, Trou­ble Every Day, was released, this time not by Artif­cial Eye but by their more genre-dri­ven rival, the now-defunct Tar­tan Releasing.

The film, a con­tem­po­rary fable con­nect­ing vam­pirism to erot­ic lust, in many ways was the per­fect fol­low-up to Beau Tra­vail, itself about love as a self-immo­lat­ing force. Images from Trou­ble Every Day lin­gered with me, unpleas­ant and ugly ones main­ly. Béa­trice Dalle’s Coré gnaw­ing through Nico­las Duvauchelle’s lip was a night­mare moment, but one con­vinc­ing­ly fuelled by unwieldy desire rather than as a piece of cos­met­ic visu­al transgression.

I am now unable to visu­alise a sit­u­a­tion where I won’t go and see one of Denis’ movies at the ear­li­est avail­able oppor­tu­ni­ty. She embod­ies a sen­si­bil­i­ty that auto­mat­i­cal­ly makes her work enrich­ing and vital. It’s not what she’s say­ing, it’s the lan­guage, the into­na­tion, the tim­bre, the pitch, the come-hith­er lugubri­ous­ness in which she’s say­ing it. It’s under­stand­able that some might find 2013’s Bas­tards a tough watch, as it is an unremit­ting­ly bleak neo-noir which sees Vin­cent Lin­don coerced into solv­ing a lurid sex crime. But it’s a film that comes into its own when the tac­tile qual­i­ties of its form grav­i­tate to the fore.

There is some­thing ambi­ent about how Denis makes films. She does not take images for grant­ed, and there is a thrill that comes from the decep­tive­ly sim­ple process of how she fus­es one image to the next. In 2002’s Fri­day Night, about a one-night stand which occurs dur­ing a tran­sit strike in Paris, Denis uses slow, judi­cious­ly applied cross-fades to evoke the dream­like aspects of this urban sex­u­al fantasy.

Her new film, High Life, deliv­ers us into the out­er reach­es of the galaxy, into the soli­tary con­fine­ment of deep space. It is Denis’ full Eng­lish-lan­guage debut, with Robert Pat­tin­son, Juli­ette Binoche and Mia Goth in the lead roles. The film is about death row con­victs aboard a prison ves­sel who have giv­en their lives over to sci­ence in return for an indef­i­nite stay of exe­cu­tion. Binoche’s Dr Dibs attempts to sim­u­late pro­cre­ation on the ship. Pattinson’s Monte, mean­while, keeps him­self to him­self as tem­pers are among his shipmates.

Talk­ing to Denis about her films is not dis­sim­i­lar to watch­ing them – she is tac­tile and impas­sioned, and hum­ble when it comes to dis­cussing the pro­found inti­ma­tions of the sto­ries she tells.

LWLies: High Life feels like a big movie.

Denis: I don’t know about that.

It’s hard to know where to start with it.

In a way, it’s a very sim­ple film. And because it is sim­ple, every detail mat­ters. Sud­den­ly it became com­plex. At the ori­gin, it was a man, alone in space, with his daugh­ter. There’s the sug­ges­tion that there’s a taboo ele­ment to this rela­tion­ship. But maybe not. I was read­ing about con­victs in a jail in Texas, and there were some peo­ple com­plain­ing about the cost of death row pris­on­ers. The oth­er pris­on­ers were work­ing in the fields. But death row inmates don’t. They are fed, they’re giv­en a room and they don’t work. So they com­plained to jour­nal­ists say­ing they should be use­ful for the coun­try. And that’s how it came to me that they could be sold as test sub­jects for science.

There are flash­backs to char­ac­ters back on Earth trav­el­ling on a train. They seem happy.

I think this is an image that belongs to Amer­i­ca. The hobos – these kids on the train – trav­el­ling around. I remem­ber when I was a kid being fas­ci­nat­ed with these young peo­ple – poets and writ­ers who were able to live with­out rules. Jack Ker­ouac comes to mind. This was the free­dom of Amer­i­ca for me. But it was a free­dom I was look­ing at from a dis­tance. Lat­er I realised that it’s not an easy type of free­dom. It’s a free­dom you have to pay for.

Do you remem­ber the first time you went to America?

Yes. I was on the plane from Paris to New York. I was so moved and so excit­ed. When I arrived at cus­toms, I was already exhaust­ed. All my emo­tion was drained. My sec­ond trip was to meet Wim Wen­ders to work on Paris, Texas. I flew to Hous­ton. We did loca­tion scout­ing in an old sta­tion wag­on. We crossed from the east to the west coast. It was amaz­ing. It was like a mys­ti­cal trip. I was work­ing with a direc­tor, mak­ing a movie, and I felt like the luck­i­est tourist ever. But I was not like a tourist. I was hyper­aware. I was look­ing at the truck stops and the ways a truck­er behaved, the roads, the landscape.

Was this prefer­able to the big cities in your eyes?

New York is New York, but when you dri­ve around in Texas, it’s anoth­er world. I remem­ber reach­ing Ari­zona and Wim show­ing me the sky­line and say­ing, ​‘Oh, I think this is the Apache moun­tains,’ and I very near­ly faint­ed with joy. Of course, I kept all those emo­tions for myself. I was aware that it was a strange way to trav­el, being in the States with this Ger­man direc­tor who knew the coun­try and spoke the lan­guage well. I was raised in Africa, I had oth­er land­scapes in mind. And sud­den­ly, it was like a big thing in my life. I was in the coun­try of cin­e­ma as opposed to the coun­try of my childhood.

Do you see High Life as a more Amer­i­can style of film?

I think it’s not Amer­i­can. I have no idea. I’m not sure I know the film exact­ly. The only thing I know for sure is that I made it. I fin­ished it. I screened it. And yet, I’m not sure any more. It will take a few months to realise what I’ve made.

Who do you talk to about your own films?

Stu­art Sta­ples. He is the one who will crit­i­cise me. He’s a great help. My edi­tor. Some friends. It’s not easy for me to start a con­ver­sa­tion about a film that I am mak­ing. I’m afraid of dis­turb­ing peo­ple. I’m afraid of look­ing like some­one who is beg­ging for affir­ma­tion. I don’t know. In the end, when there is a ret­ro­spec­tive, I’ll see a film I made five or six years ago, and I’ll think, ​‘Ahh, this is it! Now I see!’

So you are dis­cov­er­ing the film after it’s made?

When you’re shoot­ing. When there’s a sched­ule. You have dis­cus­sions with the DoP, or the actors, or the art direc­tor. Sud­den­ly, things are so pre­cise that it’s real­ly the film you’re talk­ing about. In the edit­ing room, already, dis­cus­sion is pre­cise, but there is a sense of judge­ment. Ahh, shit, what did I do?! On the set, there is naivety. There is free­dom. I remem­ber after two days of shoot­ing, Robert was in his bunk. I said, ​‘Robert, I’m sor­ry, I have to tell you some­thing. I will have to touch you.’ I have to touch the actors. I try not to touch the actors too much. I like to move a hand or a pos­ture. Juli­ette Binoche knows this already. But I thought Robert might be shocked.

Is that type of inter­ven­tion expect­ed on set?

It is expect­ed, but not the way I do it. I am not intrud­ing. I am being very dis­creet. I could give instruc­tions from a dis­tance, but I would pre­fer to mould. Peo­ple are not offend­ed, but they are sur­prised. Juli­ette loved that touch­ing direction.

Do you have to explain to peo­ple how you work?

I nev­er dare to say that. I’m too shy. It’s all in the moment. I like to declare. I’m going to touch you! Beware! Robert wrote to me say­ing that he nev­er expect­ed me to be such a punk. I said, you think so? I always think I’m so sweet. ​‘I didn’t know what we were doing but I trust­ed you,’ he said. It was weird to hear that.

Punk seems some­thing that’s very pos­i­tive. It’s cool.

Prob­a­bly, but I was surprised.

Punk is very emo­tion­al and impulsive.

Yes, I am emo­tion­al. That’s for sure.

High Life is released 10 May. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.