One thing I love about Claire Denis as a director is her relationship with the band Tindersticks – they score most of her movies. To the point that the two movies she directed in 2022 – Stars At Noon and Both Sides Of The Blade – both featured a similar moment in their trailers where you hear Stuart Staples crooning the title over the actual title card. Before I even watched Stars At Noon, I was listening to the band’s mellow, jazzy score over and over again, which compelled me to seek it out. So, that was pulling me in.
Slightly pushing me back, however, was knowing that Denis originally had Robert Pattinson (they previously worked together on the sci-fi drama, High Life) lined up to star in the movie. With that knowledge, Joe Alwyn’s casting felt like a downgrade. He’s handsome and fine as a screen presence but doesn’t have the charisma of Pattinson. Now having seen Stars At Noon, I feel Alwyn was perfectly cast – his genial blandness helps the character, Daniel, a mysterious British man who carries himself as very suave with his white suit and beard, but is eventually revealed to be somewhat clueless. And Denis and her collaborators (Eric Gautier as cinematographer) make sure Alwyn looks good on camera as well. This is balanced by Margaret Qualley’s hostile quality as the journalist named Trish, quite pushy and unlikeable, but also more of a switched-on operator than the train-wreck on the surface. Daniel and Trish meet in a hotel bar, both (white, Western) outsiders in Panama. Based on the novel by Denis Johnson, the setting has been changed to a different country and incorporates the Covid protocol and situation into the story. Themes of post-colonial exploitation by corporations and first world countries swim around the coupling of Alwyn and Qualley. This duo are both made valuable or valueless by how others see them, even as they themselves are playing roles, particularly often to each other. Great supporting turns by filmmaker/actor Benny Safdie as a chummy CIA agent and Danny Ramirez as a threatening cop.
Yeah, I was into the boozy, sweaty, chaotic, ambling vibes of Stars At Noon, a neo-noir romance within a political context that is also surprisingly funny, even with all its felt tension. Denis doesn’t ask us to fully fall in love with these characters, even if the camera and lighting do, and we observe the destruction and death these privileged westerners unthinkingly leave in their wake. Within the geopolitical climate of first-world exploitation of resource, there’s the push and pull of attraction, even within the purgatory of your own making. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 