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Deep into Claire Denis’ new drama Stars at Noon, an elemental question haunts the film’s aimless young American protagonist, who roams Nicaragua’s capital city amid a military coup: Why on earth is she here?
Trish (Margaret Qualley, daughter of Andie MacDowell) doesn’t offer direct answers, but she has one hell of a line locked and loaded: “I wanted to know the exact dimensions of hell.”
That steel-reinforced quip is typical of the sick, sharp, deflective wit of Denis’ second film of 2022, following this summer’s Both Sides of the Blade. Stars at Noon is based on a 1986 Denis Johnson novel, but in cinematic form, it plays like a guilty, libidinal echo of Casablanca mixed with the understated deathtrap politics of a John le Carré story.
As is her way, Denis—the French auteur of Beau Travail (1999), Trouble Every Day (2001) and 35 Shots of Rum (2008) fame—focuses on women, as well as the utility and sway of sex. Slowly and uncertainly, Trish’s character profile develops. She’s a journalist…or she was…sort of…now trotting barefoot about Managua, drinking rum like it’s water, barely eating, performing sex work for a few influential junta figures to remain afloat.
Despite Trish’s aforementioned wisecrack, this isn’t actually hell, but it is a real-life purgatory where her only solace is to entertain herself through banter (“any calls?” she sarcastically asks each time she returns to her dingy motel). Even down to word pronunciations, Qualley performs most interactions as either inside jokes or crackling rebukes. “Bebé,” she coos half-ironically when trying to make a john feel briefly desired. A minute later, she’s screaming at a military guard; he’s toting an assault rifle but is outgunned by her attitude.
Trish’s daily wanderings eventually lead her to the tony InterContinental Hotel bar, where she meets an oil speculator named Daniel (Joe Alwyn). He too likes to play with language and take airs on and off. “You have the kind of good manners that eventually get you killed,” she tells him only a few moments after they’ve met. They have chemistry in bed too—of an all-consuming, doomed variety in which Denis’ films specialize.
As Trish, Qualley (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Maid) delivers a career-best performance, but saying that is like comparing a musician who’s released only promising singles to one who suddenly drops a boundless concept album. At once strikingly determined, knowingly coquettish and ragingly desperate, Trish is unlike any character Qualley has played. Her performance recalls Nicole Kidman at her most resolute, Maggie Gyllenhaal at her most playful, and a personality altogether contemporary: a young American idealist who, seeing the state of the world, cannot bear to give a shit anymore.
As for Daniel, we’re left to imagine how seamlessly Robert Pattinson (who starred in Denis’ High Life in 2018 and was originally cast here) would’ve slid into this aloof and handsome character. But his loss is Alwyn’s good fortune, as the 31-year-old actor (Harriet, The Favourite) best known as Taylor Swift’s long-term boyfriend gives his first truly memorable performance.
Alwyn channels a Pierce Brosnan-esque emptiness with a trenchant thematic purpose: He’s less a Bond than someone 007 would blow off a meeting with. Daniel is an agent of mannered, chic capitalism in a country where those qualities have cachet at his hotel, but nowhere else. His suave exterior (white suit, expense account) immediately becomes disheveled when he and Trish venture into the city streets and beyond.
While it may seem regressive for Denis to center white protagonists in a Nicaragua-set film, Stars at Noon is not a savior narrative, assimilation fantasy, or exoticized horror story. Rather, her 15th feature expands her careerlong commentary—from Chocolat (1988) to White Material (2009)—on the compromises, delusions and road-to-hell-paving intentions of post-colonial Europeans.
While Johnson’s novel is set during the 1984 revolution, his story, sadly, has aged quite well. With revolutionary-turned-authoritarian leader Daniel Ortega back in power, the production was shot in Panama due in part to the Nicaraguan government’s violent crackdown on journalists and protesters. There may be smartphones in Denis’ version, but Stars at Noon still portrays the country as a devil’s playground for soldiers of fortune and proximal superpowers, as embodied by an incredible Benny Safdie bit part.
In Denis’ oeuvre, Stars at Noon is a top-shelf work, easily outshining Both Sides of the Blade. As in that film, handheld close-ups dominate the visuals, but they don’t feel like a COVID safety measure. Rather, the style emphasizes how myopic Trish and Daniel’s experiences, beauty, lust and even survival are in a country that benefits not one iota from their presence. Amid all the sterling dialogue, political innuendo, tycoon suits and sexy sundresses, Denis’ transcendent strength lies not in her surface-level directing abilities but a subversive boldness.
In turn, the film’s best moment is one simple, unpredictable sight gag. With Trish’s moral compass tied in knots, an aged Nicaraguan barkeep wanders up silently behind her, extends his arms and turns slowly in a circle, like a grandpa miming an airplane to a toddler. Trish might recognize her own brand of sarcastic mockery in the gesture, but its meaning is eminently more to the point: “Fly away, foolish child.”
SEE IT: Stars at Noon plays at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515, cinema21.com. 7 pm Wednesday, 3:45 pm Thursday, Oct. 19-20. $8-$11.