Believing to find in a British traveler, with whom she begins an affair, an ally who can help her get out of the country, an American journalist stuck in Nicaragua gradually realizes that this man is leading her into an even more troubled world.
Posted at 9:30 a.m.
By transposing a short story written by the American author Denis Johnson some forty years ago, Claire Denis brilliantly illustrates how she can approach any universe and make it her own. In this story of strangers stuck in a country in the throes of a civil war, which inevitably brings to mind the one that Peter Weir once brought to the screen in the magnificent The Year of Living Dangerously (The year of all dangers), the French filmmaker is much more interested in the impressionistic aspect of the story than in its political aspect.
The success of this film with its sometimes languid rhythm lies in this way of translating atmospheres. The heat, the moistness, the sensuality, the meeting of the bodies. First there is Trish (amazing Margaret Qualley). This American journalist, unable to sell any paper to a media outlet in her country, must now find a way to survive in Managua, where she is stuck without a passport, using desperate means with soldiers “less sexy than the revolutionaries of before “.
The screenplay, which Claire Denis wrote with Léa Mysius and Andrew Litvack, is built around the epidermal encounter between Trish and Daniel (Joe Alwyn), a mysterious British businessman whom the young woman trusts to help her get out of the country. The story then takes the form of a kind of thriller, while taking into account the pandemic era in which it is set. Note that Claire Denis had done the same in With love and determinationthe other film she proposed this year.
To be classified in the same fringe as Chocolate and White Materialwhich evoked the colonial relationship of Western peoples in foreign countries (Claire Denis grew up in several African countries within her French family), this 15e feature film by the filmmaker, the 2e that it is filming in English (four years after High Life), seduces mainly by its captivating style.
Winner of the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix this year (tied with Closeby Lukas Dhont), Stars at Noon (stars at noon is the French title) is available on video on demand on several platforms.
Drama
Stars at Noon (VF: stars at noon)
Claire Dennis
With Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn and Danny Ramirez
2:17 a.m.