Claire Denis adapts Denis Johnson’s Nicaragua-set novel relatively loosely with Stars at Noon, moving the action from the tumultuous rebellion of the ‘80s to the COVID-stricken year of 2021. It’s a move that makes the story suddenly timelier, yet also removes some urgency, allowing for a languorously paced erotic thriller, sweaty and sexy and even darkly funny. Compared to the best of Denis’s formidable body of work, Stars at Noon is a minor-ish entry into her canon, but that’s hardly a strong criticism for the latest from a filmmaker too talented to ever really have an off day.
In keeping with the book, our heroine here is Trish Johnson (Margaret Qualley), an American self-proclaimed journalist lounging around in Nicaragua. She occasionally seems to have an eye on a story, but her editor (a very fun cameo for John C Reilly) wants nothing to do with her, so she’s resorted to selling sex on the side to keep a roof over her head. This fragile existence is thrown for a calamitous loop by the arrival of enigmatic Brit Daniel DeHaven (Joe Alwyn), who claims to work for an oil company but is very clearly a spy. Trish and Daniel are drawn together magnetically, and soon their affair has attracted the attention of various intelligence agencies, forcing the couple to come up with an exit plan and flee to Costa Rica.
This may sound like the start to a steamy spin-off of the Bourne franchise, but Stars at Noon is never in a rush. In fact, it’s in its shapeless refusal to stick to any one genre that it becomes most compelling, mixing spy drama intrigue with the inaccessible plotting of classic noir (helped immensely by the jazzy, almost drunken score from regular Denis collaborators Tindersticks). It’s also an amour fou, but one where the characters’ most fatal mistakes have been made long before they meet one another.
If the romance doesn’t quite convince on paper – the dialogue from Denis and co-writer Lea Mysius is often cryptic and overwritten, which Qualley makes work but Alwyn can’t master – it does in the various sex scenes, which tell us just as much about these characters as any of the words they say do. Denis has always been a, let’s say, sensual director, and both the brutally humid Central American setting and having Qualley as a lead suit her down to the ground.
Qualley is excellent as a woman who knows how deep in over her head she is, using her sexuality as her last line of defence. It’s a protracted nervous breakdown of a performance that mixes urgent desperation with the melancholy of someone in the process of accepting their doom. Alwyn, though, is not on her level – a lot of his line reads are flat when they should feel dangerous or commanding. The role of Daniel was originally earmarked for Robert Pattinson and though Alwyn is perfunctory, it’s hard not to want to see Pattinson’s take on the material, especially after his masterful previous collaboration with Denis.
To be fair, Alwyn does grow into the performance a bit more as the story progresses and the sudden involvement of the CIA, represented in the form of a jovially aggressive man played by Benny Safdie, exposes just how crap a spy Daniel is, leaving him scrambling from moment to moment. It’s a boon both because it requires less authority from Alwyn but also because it’s simply just very funny – Denis packs the film with little gags that have a satisfyingly high hit rate, their incongruous absurdity adding to the hazy sense of the unreal that permeates Stars at Noon.
Denis build this world with the skill you’d expect and though there’s not the moments of pure visual poetry here that you can see in, say, Beau Travail or High Life, there’s still beauty and intrigue to be found. A slow dance at an empty, purple-lit club approaches transcendence and the brief appearances of the Nicaraguan locals are always bursting with life, vibrant and goofy in a way that cathartically cuts through Trish and Daniel’s idiot pomposity. As is her way, Denis manages to make her critiques of colonialism without ever beating you over the head with them, allowing the turns of the story and the consequences faced by its characters to speak for themselves.
Met with a mixed response at its Cannes premiere last year, Stars at Noon may not touch Denis’s best work (not much can, frankly), but any new film from her is to be celebrated, especially one that overcomes its flaws by being as fun and indulgent and steam-out-of-the-ears hot as this.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 