Lola On Film

It took me a while to repeat-view Claire Denis‘s moody, steamy, ambiguous adaptation of Denis Johnson’s eponymous novel Stars At Noon (2022) — something which I thought necessary to be able write about it. It had an eerie personal resonance for me, an emotional interference which I thought clouded my judgement, to a degree. So I was not quite sure what its actual impact was, other than it created a mood of its own, which lingered. That also seemed the key mystery of the film to me, and why I needed to see it again.

Intriguingly, this was equally my reaction when, a good two decades ago, I first saw Denis’s Beau travail (1999), with the difference that I knew, upon first viewing, that I was watching a masterpiece.

Denis’s latest is not the tour de force her breakthrough film was, yet it is made of the same elusive material, inhabiting a volatile liminal space, oozing sensual honesty, introducing a third entity conjured through the relating of two individuals, an interpersonal presence which the filmmaker captures through her lens as few others can, with such poetic precision and humanity.

The first time I saw Stars At Noon was in a cinema, at a festival highlights viewing, a one-off. I thought it was extraordinarily evocative in its ennui, all earthy hues, and vivid equatorial photography — its protagonist Trish (a buoyant, pitch-perfect Margaret Qualley) fully embodying this carnal claustrophobic space with a world-weariness disproportionate to her young age, somehow maintaining a genuine naiveté underneath the bratty swagger, a wildness of spirit tranquilised by endless boozing while navigating what she herself cynically defined as “the exact dimensions of hell”.

The hell in question is the Central American country of Nicaragua, in political turmoil, transferred from the original 1984 of the novel to the pandemic world of 2020 — the coordinates of the crisis remaining the same: internal corruption facilitated by foreign interference. The twenty-something drifter, a self-styled journo from the US, who, out of a strong self-destructive streak, and a penchant for just causes, finds herself deep and way over her head in a setup she can only understand the contours of. Intelligent, and quick to pick up leads, she had written well about the local dirty dealings and the damages of US meddling, but lacked the necessary status, as few back home wanted to read her thoughts, and more than a few in Nicaragua were keen to stop her reporting. Penniless and trapped, as her passport had been taken away, her press pass revoked, she becomes a de facto working prostitute, cruising luxury hotels — fidgety, charming, resourceful. Entirely beholden to two older men in positions of power (an ineffectual government minister (Stephan Proaño), and a lusty but sentimental lieutenant (Nick Romano), she receives wads of black market cordobas in exchange for sexual favours, but no dollars to help her buy her ticket out. Desperate, she stumbles upon a rare fellow foreigner at one of the hotel bars, a thirty-something Englishman (an exquisitely detached Joe Alwyn), careful, mysterious, casually interested, on dubious oil business in the country — the kind of man that she rails against. He looks at her dirty feet and beautiful face, slightly recoiling at her direct manner, and after a few drinks asks her upfront, haughtily, if she was for sale.

In turns out, she is, but not quite. And that he is in way bigger trouble than she was.

Neither trusts the other, but they grow to depend on each other, and are soon lovers on the run, as the Englishman, Daniel, is hunted down by various parties, one of which is an amusingly amicable CIA agent (Benny Safdie), hellbent on bribing/saving Trish, and a much less understanding and amicable Costa Rican cop (Danny Ramirez).

All the while the Tindersticks soundtrack is ramping up the erotica in the background, magnifying the all-consuming desire of two people who fell in love so clearly despite themselves.

In a cast interview at NYFF, Claire Denis spoke of her interest in this dynamic, of people that were not meant to be together having a strong, overwhelming attraction, one that goes against all their plans. It might be, finally, the reason why Stars At Noon stuck in my mind for far longer than I thought it might. Because there is something both endearing and tragic about these two vastly different first-world people falling through all of their personal safety nets in a devastated unfamiliar land, having only each other to be loyal to. The space between them, their sole anchor.

Although, in the end, she decided to shoot film in Panama, Denis being Denis, paints the world of present day Nicaragua incredibly vividly, with precision, depth, and respect. All the story’s characters fully fleshed out, and alive.

It is a slow burn of a film, and I am sure will grow its true audience in time.

★★★★☆

Author: ©Milana Vujkov