Stars at Noon (Claire Denis, 2022)

[lzx]

Claire Denis to Reteam with Robert Pattinson for Adaptation of Denis Johnson’s The Stars At Noon

[whaleallright]

Claire Denis to Reteam with Robert Pattinson for Adaptation of Denis Johnson’s The Stars At Noon

My immediate reaction to this was a silent but very enthused, "Oh, fuck yes."

[spectre]

I wasn’t familiar with the book, but that sounds really cool, and you just know that in Denis’ hands it’ll be something special.

[DarkImbecile]

A24 has bought the US rights to Denis' adaptation of Denis Johnson's The Stars at Noon with Robert Pattinson and Margaret Qualley

Set in 1984 during the Nicaraguan Revolution, the film follows a mysterious English businessman and headstrong American journalist who strike up a passionate romance. They soon become embroiled in a dangerous labyrinth of lies and conspiracies and are forced to try and escape the country, with only each other to trust and rely on.

[therewillbeblus]

A24 has bought the US rights to Denis' adaptation of Denis Johnson's The Stars at Noon with Robert Pattinson and Margaret Qualley

Set in 1984 during the Nicaraguan Revolution, the film follows a mysterious English businessman and headstrong American journalist who strike up a passionate romance. They soon become embroiled in a dangerous labyrinth of lies and conspiracies and are forced to try and escape the country, with only each other to trust and rely on.

Sounds great, I'm in. Also, very different sounding than the author's (more autobiographical) other adapted work Jesus' Son, which was a terrific film

[beamish14]

Stars at Noon (Denis, Comp). Terrible pacing. Terrible direction of actors. Makes that sparkly space incest movie look like a masterpiece.

Stars at Noon never hooked me as a novel, either. Some people love Denis Johnson’s prose, but he was one of those writers who always seemed to relish putting his reader at an extreme distance and feel deeply alienated from what they’re reading about, and that resonates with a lot of critics and MFA students, but it just frustrated me.

[zedz]

Stars at Noon isn't as good as Both Sides of the Blade (which isn't as good as any number of Denis films, yet still packs a punch), but it's an intriguing misfire that compartmentalizes into a number of different films.

1) It's another fine, atmospheric post-colonial (though the "post" bit definitely gets smacked around a bit in the course of the narrative) Claire Denis mood piece, with one of the best Tindersticks scores yet. This part of the film gets an A, but there's far too little of it. The plot is always getting in the way.
2) It's a pretty good political thriller, with plenty of messy ambiguity and queasy uncertainty, oblique threats and collateral damage. B+ for this part.
3) It's a lousy relationship drama, suffering the fatal double blow of a lack of chemistry between the leads and frankly dreadful dialogue. Margaret Qualley is placed in that unenviable "acting for two" position, because Joe Alwyn is as DOA as a male model who can't find his light. It's never remotely believable even as l'amour fou (something Juliette Binoche managed to pull off in Both Sides of the Blade.)

As a long-time follower of Denis, I found enough to keep me diverted, but this is thin gruel and one of her weakest features. John C. Reilly's very brief appearance brings a bit of energy, and suggests that Qualley's character's back story would have made for a much more interesting film. It's probably the most interesting part of this film, even though you only get it in glancing asides and inferences.

[pistolwink]

That's too bad since this was apparently a dream project for Denis for a while, although the actors ultimately cast were not her first choices IIRC.

Denis speaks fluent if strongly accented English in interviews, and she's lived in the U.S. for several spells, but there's a common thing where directors moving out of their native language sometimes have an understandly tin ear for dialogue and line readings. (That recent Jia Zhangke movie was a good—bad—example.) I wonder if that happened here.

[dadaistnun]

Trailer

[zedz]

The Tindersticks soundtrack for Stars at Noon (possibly the best thing about it) has just been released, though there doesn't seem to be any physical version.
bandcamp

[Matt]

Stars at Noon…a lousy relationship drama, suffering the fatal double blow of a lack of chemistry between the leads and frankly dreadful dialogue. Margaret Qualley is placed in that unenviable "acting for two" position, because Joe Alwyn is as DOA as a male model who can't find his light. It's never remotely believable even as l'amour fou (something Juliette Binoche managed to pull off in Both Sides of the Blade.)

I’m saddened to have to concur with this. I love Margaret Qualley, but I can’t quite believe her as this character. She might be credible as an in-over-her-head Vice-style reporter, and how she got in over her head would definitely be the more interesting story.

The political aspect of the film (which is a 50/50 mix of The Quiet American and The Year of Living Dangerously) feels very dated, vaguely sketched, and never builds to much urgency or suspense. I don’t think the plot (such as it is) even begins to cohere until about 90 minutes in.

I don’t think Denis is capable of making a bad film, but this just reeks of “troubled production” or producer meddling or Denis just losing interest at some point but being obligated to complete it. At heart, though, it just feels like a bad script—a talky, dutiful adaptation of a novel with no attempt to translate it cinematically.

I actually like Joe Alwyn as the bland, clueless, meddlesome “ghost of colonialism” in his increasingly dingy white linen suit, pale skin, and golden hair, reminiscent of Audie Murphy in the Mankiewicz version of The Quiet American. I think Robert Pattinson might have been able to conjure up more smolder and chemistry with Qualley, but the character is essentially just a spark to set the plot into motion and it’s a mistake to spend so much of the running time to make him seem appealing. So, yeah, Qualley (and her character) has to shoulder the entire film, which is unfair, unwise, and unfortunate.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, I'm one of the few who loved her other film from this year, but the most interesting thing about Stars at Noon is its title. Easily her worst feature and a waste of Qualley's talents in this role. Hearing about the more pronounced metaphor within the source makes me question why Denis didn't engage with that idea, especially since she's not exactly implementing her usual elliptical or lyrical wit here either

[The Narrator Returns]

I'll buck against the consensus here and at Cannes and say that I loved Stars at Noon, I've only seen about half of Denis's features but I'd put this closer to the top of that group than the bottom. It reminded me a lot of my favorite Denis, Friday Night, there's the same kind of overwhelming intimacy to how Denis films two people awkwardly circling each other that I found totally engrossing, even while Denis complicates it with the characters' complete ignorance to the dire situation around them. And I thought Qualley was magnificent, especially her goofy, almost clownish close-up acting that always caught me by surprise (and I liked Alwyn's simplicity as a counterpoint to her, I worry Pattinson would just upstage her if he was in that part). Great use of Benny Safdie as the brick wall that Qualley runs headfirst into as well, he's got a terrific character actor career separate of his day job.

[diamonds]

I really liked it as well, and thought it was handily her stronger 2022 feature. The complaint that the plot takes a while to cohere is a bit funny to me since narrative has almost always taken a backseat to rhythm in Denis' films (and the rhythms here are exquisite). It's true perhaps, but then one could also argue the same for To Have and Have Not, one of the films I thought of while watching this American adrift abroad. Of course, it's a matter of personal taste whether one finds Denis' study of Margaret Qualley—the way she strolls down the street, the way she sticks her head out the window in a cab, the way she carries her shoes or slips out of her dress; her skin, her hair in the humidity, and (especially) her wide, expressive eyes as she steels herself for sex or watches Daniel from afar—as compelling as Hawks' study of the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. But unlike the electricity that powers Hawks' film, I think the mismatch between Trish and Daniel here is sort of the point. I haven't read the novel, but Denis has said that it's a novel about "two people who are not meant to be together."

Like Petzold's Transit, this isn't exactly a love story so much as a failed attempt at a love story between two people who are thrust together due to tumultuous political circumstances. They have both been "cut loose," to use Trish's words, he from his handlers, she from her employers and the political contacts she's been sleeping with. When she tells a group of indifferent locals that she doesn't have any Yankee amigos, the frightening admission is that she is truly, utterly alone. The point isn't smolder or passion, it's desperation. And there is something really desperate and achingly human about the way these two people throw themselves at and cling to each other when they are all each other has in a foreign land, each in way over their heads. When Trish tearfully clutches Daniel after her confrontation with the Costa Rican police, or when Denis' camera lingers on their hands as they grasp each other before making a big decision, or when Trish just repeats, "Cover me up, cover me up..." I found myself very moved. Because Denis' filmmaking remains so sumptuous and tactile, questions of chemistry never entered my mind. I simply believe it when these two are clawing at each other. I like the way Denis & Gautier slowly introduce color into the love scenes, beginning with the pallid nighttime scene in Daniel's hotel hours after they first meet when their relationship is purely transactional (she needs money, he wants sex), all the way to that beautiful slow dance bathed in purple, all alone together.

And like Transit (which also places a period piece into a modern context, albeit one with a much larger intervening time interval), Stars at Noon is a film that takes stasis and obstruction as its central motifs. There is a practically dizzying array of barriers in the film, barriers which are invisible, bureaucratic, pecuniary. Trish must beg to use the phone, pay a bribe to make a video call. She is barred from using a door to exit, blocked from eating breakfast at a hotel buffet ("Guests only"). She can't leave the country without a passport (held up because of her "stupid articles"), can't get a plane ticket without American dollars, can't change her córdobas into dollars without a passport. Daniel can't access his hotel room because the Costa Rican police are camped outside it, and when he tries to speak to the receptionist on the phone he's unable to communicate with her without a knowledge of Spanish—the barrier of language. At one point late in the film, their car gets stuck in a deep puddle on the way across the border, and Denis' camera lingers on some soldiers passing by in the opposite direction as they trudge through the water, something of a cruel sight gag. The pandemic slots in so naturally to these concerns, not only adding to the ambient air of unease but also providing one more barrier for entry into buildings or across borders. Another layer of confinement.

At every moment in this film we are acutely aware of the limits of the world Trish finds herself in which are dictated by governments and money—in other words, “the exact dimensions of hell”. (Take a shot every time money is mentioned or exchanged—you'd end up drunker than Trish pretty quickly!) Her little motel room is a temporary oasis in part because it has the backdoor built for when the building operated as a brothel, which promises both freedom of movement (clients can come and go as they please) and privacy, a precious commodity that is all but nonexistent in this world of constant surveillance, tracking, and monitoring. (Sound familiar?)

Regarding the political situation in the film being both "dated" and "vaguely sketched," for me it's precisely the latter that precludes the former. CIA spooks meddling in foreign affairs will never go out of style; it's not like the US has drastically departed from its exploitative foreign policy in the last few decades even if the geography has shifted. So Benny Safdie arrives channeling Peter Bogdanovich's slimy Singapore operator in Saint Jack (which might make for an interesting double bill with Stars at Noon, two films about sex and exile, a pimp and a prostitute). He complains about the lack of manners he observes among Trish and the locals when ordering food, making sure to always say "please" and "thank you" himself to the waitress refilling his drink. The irony is painfully apparent, a politeness that belies the systematic raping of the region on behalf of the United States' interests. (A key line: "Don't you know what a delusional asshole he is? Giving charts and documents and a whole economic future to a rogue state?" "Rogue" as in not kowtowing to the US, "future" as in freedom). Trish's direct manner is far more honest; she knows the score, knows that this world runs on transactions. Note too the comparative ease with which the CIA man moves through the world, materializing in the COVID tent as if by magic. Or when he addresses a bartender in English and doesn't care at all that the man can't understand him; the language barrier does not exist for powerful men like himself.

I'm also intrigued by the way Trish occasionally voices this imperialist mentality herself, telling the cab driver his car stinks or yelling in a moment of frustration about "American tanks coming and crushing your hopeless country." And the two leave some significant destruction in their wake:

Spoiler

Daniel causes the cab driver to be executed, and Trish's offer to buy off a man's car leads to it being set ablaze. Denis makes a point of showing us the tears in his eyes while the smoke rises and the couple flees. These aren't exactly their fault, being as they are acts of violence perpetrated by powerful state actors. They are simply there, suggesting that there are no right moves to make when one is the target of a hostile government, another layer in a film where exploitation and state violence are never front and center but always more than a mere backdrop.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the final exchange between Trish and Daniel, which seems a bit too underplayed for what it is: a final extinguishment of love. But the final scene between Trish and Subtenente Verga is a perfectly bleak note to end on, for me more chilling than the final shot of Bastards. Very early on in the film Trish tells Daniel, only half-jokingly, "We're all for sale." By the end, Denis seems to conclude this is true. We are all pawns to much larger forces that remain vague and remote. The world demands that everyone have a price, so everyone is a whore. The best we can do is hope that whoever comes along to fuck us is somewhat agreeable.

[therewillbeblus]

At every moment in this film we are acutely aware of the limits of the world Trish finds herself in which are dictated by governments and money—in other words, “the exact dimensions of hell”

It's the Hell allegory that didn't feel explicit enough for me, and where I felt the movie failed in reference to what the book is supposedly weaving more strongly into its text. While I agree that there's incessant transactional details and insurmountable obstacles imbedded in the film, a sense of mood around these conditions didn't fester in an effective way, nor did the blissful reprieves from oppressive forces between lovers like in the dance club. That scene reminded me a bit of the best extended sequence in U.S. Go Home where Martine wanders around the party amongst the dancers, except here it rings hollow whereas that movie’s similar aesthetic and emotional engagement is riveting and sublime, even if both implement the same kind of elastic intimacy with their lead.

Anyways, I enjoyed reading that really passionate defense, diamonds! I wish I saw the movie you did

[criterionsnob]

Does anyone own the Stars at Noon Blu-ray from France? I just realized it exists. I'm wondering if the French subtitles are removable, or if they're forced.

[bad future]

I'm also wondering about that, but also thinking that might be a moot point for me because I don't speak Spanish, and I remember there being enough Spanish in the film that I think I'd miss having English subtitles either way. YMMV obviously. Really too bad it seems to have missed the threshold for release by A24/Lionsgate; this was my favorite Denis film in a long time!

[criterionsnob]

Good point, I might stick with the iTunes version for now. Hopefully A24 comes around someday. Or Criterion for that matter. These A24 releases come out to CAD$88 to import.

[senseabove]

Does anyone own the Stars at Noon Blu-ray from France? I just realized it exists. I'm wondering if the French subtitles are removable, or if they're forced.

Caved and ordered this. I was about to confirm the subtitles are not forced, then realized that the avforums region-free firmware patch for the Panasonic players defeats the forced part of forced subs, so checked on the Oppo and they ARE indeed forced.

Good news, though, is that it's a BD-50 with a 40GB feature and, on a spot check it looks really, really good.

[criterionsnob]

Thanks for following up. I may pick it up at some point anyway, forced subs or not.