4 stars out of 5
I’m sort of an R-Patz completist, so you knew I was going to see this film. OK, actually, the only thing I’ve ever seen Robert Pattinson in before was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in which he portrayed Cedric Diggory, and I didn’t know that until about 3 minutes ago.
And, despite the fact that I saw this movie on the birthday of director/co-writer Claire Denis (April 21, which I only learned 4 minutes ago), I’m even less familiar with her work. However, I’ve known her name since 1996, when one of my fave bands, Tindersticks, did the soundtrack to her film Nénette et Boni. That’s one of at least 4 Tindersticks soundtracks to Denis movies that I own.
So, really, it was the combination of kinda knowing Pattinson and kinda knowing Denis and me really digging artsy sci-fi that brought me to High Life. And yup, main ‘Stick Stuart A. Staples is back with the music; R-Patz even sings the tune playing over the end credits, with instrumentation by Tindersticks. The story preceding that song is a bit of an interstellar head trip.
Pattinson plays Monte, an accidental astronaut. We soon learn that he’s raising a baby girl, Willow, on an otherwise deserted, somewhat broken-down spacecraft, making the best of their meager resources. Seems like Monte got a raw deal, so how did he get here? Flashbacks teach us that the crew of this ship had been death-row inmates, recruited to be outer-space guinea pigs in some freaky insemination experiments. (No doubt inspired by the real-life moral question of using prisoners as test subjects.) In charge of the science is Juliette Binoche, an incarcerated baddie herself, but at least a baddie with some background in biology — oh, and some “issues.”
Put it all in a blender and it’s a tone-poem mix of sex and control and redemption and birth and death and survival and hope. Clear cinematic antecedents include Gravity, Duncan Jones’ Moon, and of course 2001, but High Life is without a doubt its own beast. And a very good watch, if you don’t mind your sci-fi on the slower… quieter… more thoughtful side.
Jack Silbert, curator