Director: Clare Denis
Starring: Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn, Benny Safdie, John C Reilly
Distributor: Rialto
Runtime: 138 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2022
Reviewer: Jan Epstein

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Rating notes: Strong sex scenes and coarse language

Young American journalist Trish is stranded in Nicaragua. She encounters a mysterious Englishman who may help her get out. Civil war, brutal soldiers, corrupt officials and the CIA.

Once upon a time in a dystopian universe far, far away, there is a young, attractive, emotionally complicated American journalist who finds herself marooned in a Central American town. This is the central premise of celebrated filmmaker Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon, which will probably alienate some viewers while fascinating others, particularly those who enjoyed Denis’ bewildering sci-fi tour de force, High Life (2018).  

The storyline of Stars at Noon is seemingly simple, but at heart it is as oblique and ambiguous as its title. Set during the Nicaraguan Revolution of the 1980s, which is shown futuristically as taking place today, a young American journalist called Trish (Qualley) finds herself caught between a rock and a very hard place.

As well as being trapped in a military state overrun by solders, Nicaragua is in the grip of a global pandemic, and with both her passport and press card seized without explanation by exploitative government officials, Trish turns to selling her body as a means of survival.    

When she meets an enigmatic but handsome young Englishman Daniel (Alwyn) in the bar of the town’s upmarket Intercontinental Hotel, what begins as a casual sexual relationship becomes more meaningful and obsessive, with Trish hoping that Daniel will provide her with an escape route from what is becoming a nightmare. 

Stars at Noon is based on Denis Thompson’s 1986 novel, and by the end of Claire Denis’ circuitous and very long film (138 minutes), the question of who Trish is and how she got to be where she finds herself, haunts not only the young journalist but the viewer struggling to make sense of what is happening on screen.

The film boasts impressive acting from Qualley (Netflix’s Maids), splendid cinematography by Eric Gautier (Into the Wild), and there is some clever dialogue. When Daniel asks Trish why she came to Nicaragua, she replies, ‘I wanted to know the exact dimensions of hell’. Cutting to the chase, Daniel asks her if she is for sale, and when Trish says ‘I’m press’, and he replies in response, ‘We’re all press’, this leads the young journalist to comment pointedly, ‘Then we’re all for sale’.

But as good as these moments are, they are rare, and in the larger scheme of the film’s metaphysical intent, they do little to make the characters either engaging or believable.

Denis’ High Life is about a group of criminals sent on a space mission towards a black hole, and in some ways this apocalyptic journey is echoed in Stars at Noon. Trish and Daniel become frantic lovers to escape from a dystopian world where everyone wears masks, and military rule is rife. To a degree they succeed, but only by bleakly acknowledging that even in the darkest of times, and contrary to what many of us would like to believe, love no longer has the power to save us.