High Life

Usu­al­ly, when describ­ing a film, writ­ers have access to the vocab­u­lary that has formed around cin­e­ma in the 100 plus years since the birth of this rel­a­tive­ly young medi­um. Cliché́s exist with­in sto­ry­telling and gen­res, mean­ing that there is a sense of famil­iar­i­ty as you sit back and some­times strain to see orig­i­nal­i­ty, scan­ning the screen and peer­ing between the lines for hits of fresh­ness. In most cas­es, we bear wit­ness to stan­dard-issue machin­ery clank­ing its gears.

High Life is the oppo­site of this, exist­ing at such a cos­mic remove from estab­lished cin­e­mat­ic gram­mar that one is almost aligned with the film’s baby char­ac­ter, Wil­low; con­front­ed with a world of infi­nite strange­ness, hor­ror and beau­ty with­out recourse to a struc­ture that gives a damn about guid­ing you through this strange place. And yet, as she has done many times before, direc­tor Claire Denis pulls off the inex­plic­a­ble, anchor­ing mul­ti­ple dis­parate ele­ments by employ­ing the grav­i­ty of pro­found mys­tique. If that sounds abstract to the point of mad­ness then it is an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the French auteur’s aston­ish­ing Eng­lish lan­guage debut.

Robert Pat­tin­son plays Monte, who along with a delight­ful baby (Scar­lett Lind­sey), is the last sur­vivor on a space­ship that was at one time full of con­victs. This crew has been ​“recy­cled” by the gov­ern­ment back on Earth, which is to say tak­en from their jail cells and sent on a sui­cide mis­sion to har­vest ener­gy from black holes. A pre-title cred­it sequence shows Monte heav­ing the dead bod­ies of his crew-mates out of an air­lock where they pro­ceed to float into the void.

The film unfolds across a dual time­line. Flash­backs depict cama­raderie and con­fronta­tion before peo­ple began to die, while the present is eeri­ly qui­et. Stu­art Sta­ples’ score stretch­es across the entire opus – past, present and future. Denis’ kin­dred spir­it and musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tor of 23 years has long known how to alchemise her visions into sound, and here he is at his haunt­ing best. Instead of the fast-paced, elec­tron­ic tunes we asso­ciate with typ­i­cal sci­ence-fic­tion fare, Sta­ples has com­posed notes that stretch out and leak into a sound design. They res­onate like an unan­swered ques­tion – a yearn­ing call that seeps into infin­i­ty and nev­er returns.

In the rel­a­tive bus­tle of the past time­line, Dr Dibs (Juli­ette Binoche), sport­ing a white lab coat and long black hair, is obsessed with mak­ing babies. She is pre­oc­cu­pied with clin­i­cal pro­ce­dure, han­dling flu­ids, syringes and pipettes, and tak­ing semen sam­ples from all the men, save Monte who is dubbed ​“the monk” for his absti­nence. Sex­u­al relief exists in the form of the ​“fuck­box” out of which steam cir­cles and white flu­id bub­bles. Pride of place is a giant dil­do mount­ed to a buck­ing bron­co which Binoche (ever the all-in per­former) rides for one mes­meris­ing sequence.

The black-out-blind dark­ness of this space has drawn com­par­isons to Scar­lett Johansson’s man-eat­ing lair in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. How­ev­er, Glazer’s film in its entire­ty calls back to Claire Denis’ 2001 vam­pire movie, Trou­ble Every Day – the ways that Béatrice Dalle and Johans­son hon­ey-trap their prey and images of men on motor­cy­cles are inter­change­able. Whichev­er your entry point to this feed­back loop, gloopy expres­sions of sex­u­al­i­ty with­in an uncan­ny and mur­der­ous world make Glaz­er and Denis mood twins.

Erup­tions of vio­lence are com­mon­place on the ship, with fer­al behav­iour an instinct rather than a mean­ing­ful slight. As such, rela­tion­ships are volatile. Monte has a semi-affec­tion­ate bond with Boyse (Mia Goth), whose wild­cat ener­gy is a sur­vival strat­e­gy, and some­thing like a chill bud­dy in Tch­erny (André Ben­jamin), who loves to spend time in the ship’s over­grown gar­den where the pair talk mov­ing­ly about the absurd sit­u­a­tion in which they’ve found themselves.

We are clued into back sto­ries via occa­sion­al frag­ments of infor­ma­tion. How char­ac­ter, plot and theme coa­lesce is not easy to deci­pher. This is image-dri­ven film­mak­ing, with lit­tle inter­est in link­ing every­thing togeth­er through expo­si­tion. Monte talks to the baby. Monte cares for the baby. Monte pilots the mis­sion. Time pass­es. In the flash­backs the con­victs are at each other’s throats.

Still, the way they look at each oth­er is charged with emo­tions rarely shown exist­ing side-by-side. Denis loves her actors, and with the help of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Yorick Le Saux, she fills the frame with faces. Binoche exudes preda­to­ry lust. Goth is rosy and wild. Ben­jamin is a pic­ture of ami­able grace. New­com­er Ewan Mitchell has a dan­ger­ous sex­u­al ener­gy. It’s not safe for these peo­ple to be locked in cap­tiv­i­ty togeth­er, yet this is their destiny.

Desire is every­where. It com­petes with vio­lence to be the life-force of this sui­cide mis­sion. ​“I guess my films are made out of ten­der­ness and love for human beings, even when they are very bru­tal,” is how Denis intro­duced the film at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val in 2018. Indeed, there is a rape scene pre­sent­ed in a way that con­founds instinc­tive reac­tions. Hers is a body of work that defies com­mon log­ic and embraces taboo in a way that 99 out of 100 film­mak­ers would mess up, but she pulls o with the sheer force of integrity.

Pat­tin­son is amaz­ing, deliv­er­ing a sophis­ti­cat­ed, emo­tion­al­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ing per­for­mance that is root­ed in small phys­i­cal process­es. Denis is a direc­tor who rewards col­lab­o­ra­tors that give them­selves to her – mind, body and soul. She hon­ours vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by fram­ing and mag­ni­fy­ing it on screen. The ten­der­ness Monte extends to baby Wil­low is all the more mov­ing because it exists in con­trast to the utter bleak­ness of the mis­sion. One of the film’s cen­tral themes is an account of par­ent­hood as the pro­vi­sion of a nur­tur­ing micro­cosm, staunch against exter­nal dangers.

I’ve seen this film three times. Why see a film three times? The lure of intense mys­tery that beguiles you into try­ing to solve it again and again; the trans­fer­ence of an intox­i­ca­tion that makes you feel phys­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent after­wards. It sounds hyper­bol­ic to describe art as hav­ing such pow­er, but sure­ly the rea­son we care about art is a belief that such pow­er exists. High Life is too lay­ered, too ambigu­ous, too potent to be about any one thing.

My inter­pre­ta­tion is unlike­ly to be the same as oth­er inter­pre­ta­tions. All I can say is that it’s a plea­sure to have my review­ing fac­ul­ties blown and my psy­che splin­tered by this mas­ter film­mak­er. The art we love works to expose our val­ues, our tastes. My taste for Claire Denis leaves me feel­ing total­ly exposed, like a baby bur­bling to a benign author­i­ty while adult emo­tions twist in the dark­ness of the universe.