The bustle that usually animates Managua has been muted. The Nicaraguan capital, in the tropical heat, is suffering the full brunt of the fever of COVID-19 and the atmosphere is heating up as the presidential elections approach, which weighs on the region’s quest for balance.
Amid sanitary masks and armed soldiers, a young American woman calling herself a journalist (Margaret Qualley), stranded in the country, sells her body for US dollars or services. After learning that the government has invalidated her press card, she goes on the hunt for a new client at the Intercontinental hotel. The American quickly falls in love with this mysterious Englishman (Joe Alwyn) who claims to represent a hydrocarbon company. She sees in him a way out, but he will instead turn out to be a chasm towards more problems and dangers.
The pandemic, whose name will not be mentioned, will have taken precedence over many things, but who would have thought that it would take precedence over the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution. This is however what happened with this adaptation by Claire Denis of the novel The Stars at Noon by Dennis Johnson.
The work of the American writer, camped in Managua in 1984, is transposed in front of the camera of the French director in this contemporary context that we know only too well. But the masks we see on the screen are not so sanitary and that is the beauty of the adaptation that Denis is offering us today.
Faithful to the purgatorial vagueness that was the essence of the novel, this second feature film in English by the filmmaker envelops us in a fog from which we do not want to get out. Nor did the Cannes jury, it seems, since it awarded the film the Grand Prix this year, tied with Close by Lucas Dhont.
Claire Denis adopts an original posture for this breathless work which oscillates between the thriller film, the spy film, the drama and the romance. The result is an intimate thriller that captivates from start to finish as it lets us glimpse an intricate plot through the blinders of disgruntled lovers.
Exoticism and eroticism
Exoticism is in full swing in a moist and breathless atmosphere where the two heroes struggle, about whom we know almost nothing, but who arouse our curiosity and make us fall under their spell in the second. stars at noon is the perfect example of what the magic of cinema can do.
Always as meticulous, Claire Denis meticulously recreates, thanks to an abundance of details, Nicaragua in neighboring Panama (the director had given up filming in Nicaragua because of the re-election marred by repression of Daniel Ortega).
Better still, with the help of her director of photography Éric Gautier, she manages to convey the stifling dampness specific to this region of the world and sensualizes it to the extreme.
The excellent soundtrack composed by his lifelong partner, the group Tindersticks, further intensifies this feeling of lascivious sultry so seductive.
And if exoticism is king, voluptuousness is queen. stars at noon is a feverish film, with sensuality without detour or sentimentality. The scene of the box, parenthesis outside time and space, is the summit and Denis sublimates the couple of heroes, with features chiseled by neon lights.
The director also seems determined to make us fall in love with her actress and she almost succeeds. She films her actress like a fetish, eroticizing her hair, her feet, her curves and superimposing our gaze on that of her heroine.
Margaret Qualley is obvious in the main role. Her character, whimsical and direct, would not have had the same aura without the magnetic charm of Andie MacDowell’s daughter. Facing her, Joe Alwyn plays on the string of the enigma without false note. However, one cannot help but wonder if the interpretation of the main male role would not have gained in intensity with Robert Pattinson, who was originally planned for the role but who had to withdraw because of the postponements of filming.