‘High Life’: A provocative space journey with Robert Pattinson and a baby

SHARE ‘High Life’: A provocative space journey with Robert Pattinson and a baby
high_life_claire_denis_1_proxy_md_e1555081931167.jpg

Robert Pattinson plays an astronaut in “High Life.” | A24

French filmmaker Claire Denis, one of the great living directors, has not lost her edge as she’s coasted into her 70s. Her latest film, “High Life,” is as stimulating and challenging as anything she made in the ’90s. Here, she’s taken us not to post-Colonial West Africa or modern-day France, but to the outer reaches of space to drift around an ominous black hole with Robert Pattinson and a baby, daring us to piece together how they ended up in such a precarious situation.

The only thing that’s immediately clear is that they are alone on this spaceship, which is hardly the most advanced-looking rig. Instead it seems straight out of a 1970s film, and it is slowly and surely shutting down. Designed by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, it sets a perfectly unnerving mood, and every day Pattinson has to convince a low-tech computer that he is healthy enough and the ship is stable enough to justify systems running for another 24 hours. It’s an existential chore to say the least.

Pattinson, as a character named Monte, doesn’t have much dialogue to work with. But there is a world of fear and anxiety in his eyes as he tries to tend to the needs of the creaky old ship and the adorable little infant in his care, soothing her through a speaker as he tries to fix something outside the ship. He has a few flashbacks to a moment in his youth on a grey fall day with a young girl and a dog near a desolate pond in the woods, but it will take some time for the film to reveal what happened then and why it’s relevant.

Although it is oddly peaceful and compelling watching Monte and this baby, Willow, go through their routine, which requires some inventiveness to deal with some of her bodily functions, eventually you start to itch for the why and the how, and Denis doesn’t disappoint with her patient reveals. First, you realize, there was other crew on board, but they’ve all died. Then things get even weirder — the rating description offers hints but doesn’t compare to the visceral horror of watching much of that transpire.

It seems a little strange that a Denis movie might contain spoilers, but it also feels wrong to describe in detail what happened before Monte and Willow were the only ones left. Suffice it say, Monte was part of a strange program with inmates, all testy and violent and withdrawn in their own way, who find themselves under the watch and experimentation of Juliette Binoche’s Dr. Dibs, a witchy, serious and haunting on-board physician with some interesting sexual preferences.

This kind of moviegoing experience is a full-body one and totally transfixing from start to finish, but it’s also maddeningly confounding, leaving the audience always a few steps behind in discovering and integrating into this bleak little micro society. I’m still not entirely sure what it all adds up to, but it is provocative, difficult and bleak and leaves you with a very precise feeling of despair and aloneness — just like the best of the space independents do.

‘High Life’

★★★

A24 presents a film written and directed by Claire Denis. Rated R (for disturbing sexual and violent content including sexual assault, graphic nudity, and for language). Running time: 110 minutes. Opens Friday at local theaters.

The Latest
Busch found an unconventional way to score in the Cubs’ loss to the Rangers.
The acquisition of Tamarack Farms makes Hackmatack National Wildlife Refuge a more impactful destination and creates within Hackmatack a major macrosite for conservation.
The man was found unresponsive in an alley in the 10700 block of South Lowe Avenue, police said.
The man suffered head trauma and was pronounced dead at University of Chicago Medical Center, police said.
Another federal judge in Chicago who also has dismissed gun cases based on the same Supreme Court ruling says the high court’s decision in what’s known as the Bruen case will “inevitably lead to more gun violence, more dead citizens and more devastated communities.”