Features

High Life

Claire Denis
DEU, FRA, USA, GBR, PL 2018
110 min
V'18

For family reasons Claire Denis can unfortunately not join us in Vienna.

“Taboo” is the first clearly audible dialogue in Claire Denis’ HIGH LIFE. And it’s also probably the last word on a film whose daring is the equal of TROUBLE EVERY DAY. This lo-fi sci-fi drama about a group of convicts exiled by science and society to the furthest reaches of space rivals its director’s earlier, notorious vampire thriller in terms of disturbingly sexualized violence, but it also closely resembles 35 RHUMS and LES SALAUDS in its trenchant examination of paternal affection.
The opening beautiful, tender sequences showing Monte caring silently and tirelessly for his young daughter on a deserted spaceship become complexly recontextualized as the movie goes on (and flashes back and forward in time via a thrillingly achronological narrative structure). This being a Claire Denis film, HIGH LIFE is, of course, virtuosically visualized with the director incorporating witty, suggestive special effects into a mise-en-scene that’s in the sci-fi tradition yet owes no obvious debts to Kubrick or Tarkovsky: as always, this director remains a defiant, uncategorizable original. (Adam Nayman)

 

Credits
  • Robert Pattinson - Monte
  • Juliette Binoche - Dr. Dibs
  • André Benjamin - Tcherny
  • Mia Goth - Boyse
  • Lars Eidinger - Chandra
  • Claire Denis
  • Jean-Pol Fargeau
  • Geoff Cox
  • Tomasz Naumiuk
  • Yorick Le Saux
  • Andreas Hildebrandt
  • Guy Lecorne
  • Tindersticks
  • Stuart Staples
  • François-Renaud Labarthe
Pandora Film Produktion, Alcatraz Films, The Apocalypse Film Company, Madants Production

Wild Bunch

Polyfilm
DCP
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