High Life

High Life. Claire Denis. 2018.

Hey! Claire Denis! Science Fiction! Space! New!

OK, I’m slightly drunk and hoping this movie won’t be too gruesome. I mean, I love Denis, but ever since Trouble Every Day (which is a vampire/cannibal movie with way too much cannibalism) I’m a bit wary.

Those French directors, you know.

Unusually for Denis, the cinematography isn’t by Agnès Godard. As much as I love her, Yorick Le Saux manages to do very, very Denis-like shots,

This movie has the sort of structure that I usually love: We’re dropped into the middle of it all, and things don’t make sense really, but we trust that it’s going to make sense.

But.

This shot, a few minutes into the movie, just made me go… “wha”…

I mean, it’s established immediately that we’re on a space ship that has a constant acceleration of about 1G. But then there’s this shot of a floating glove. What? How. When? What?

And losing faith in the narrative at this point isn’t a good thing. And while every scene is fab, my mind is just buzzing with “er… sending criminals into space… that’s not a good idea; there’s a gazillion of people who would volunteer”… “er… why can’t they just fuck…” “er… why don’t they just rebel…”

I mean, if trust was established at the start, then I’d just go along and see what happens, expecting things to resolve. And some of the things did, because Denis, but.

But that floating glove. That fucking glove.