Extremely long-term anticipation thread for Claire Denis, Zadie Smith and Olafur Eliasson's Sci-Fi film, High Life

I'd forgotten that André Benjamin is in this. And Victor Banerjee of A Passage to India!

for Toronto folks, there's a one-off screening next Thursday evening (the 28th) to tie in with the Denis retro

May the 10th is the UK release date.

saw the trailer yesterday during Gloria Bell.

could a mod add HIGH LIFE to the thread title for easy future discovery?

I liked this a lot, though I heard at least one fellow moviegoer decry it as "awful," which tracks with its chilly reception at TIFF. Much less graphic than I was led to believe - IIRC Trouble Every Day was considerably moreso. Sort of a halfway point between Event Horizon and Solaris, if that's possible. Great baby acting.

*sipping out of my TIFF water bottle*

sounds good, Simon!

something I've learned over the years is that the average TIFF gala audience is barely a half-step above the audiences who rate movies for CinemaScore.

I've never been to one of their events, but the HQ or whatever was a nice space to see a movie

Sort of a halfway point between Event Horizon and Solaris

at last, the movie for me

somehow I've read hype for this elsewhere and didn't connect it to what I'd read previously on this thread and I'm kind of doubly-excited now

I disliked it; kept from hate only bcz half of the laughs seem to be intentional.

"The Fuckbox" is not a spoiler.

It is definitely very dislikable. A friend of mine napped through a good half-hour.

The only thing I'd have jettisoned would have been the expository train scene.

I guess my viewing here in nyc has special guests. Will report back in a few hours.

say hi to the fuck box for me!

this movie is going to make it harder to find a torrent of the classic alan cumming and forbes masson sitcom the high life isn't it?

I regret to inform you the audience questions were bad but Claire Denis and Robert Pattinson seem nice

Glen Kenny was the host/interviewer. They had to hustle because there’s a second showing where they’re doing q&a at a nicer theater in a few minutes

oh yeah and the movie took a while to sell me on the whole premise with the awkward cast energy but it had a... relatively strong finish

I had a couple serious questions in mind about working with a toddler and whether that experience affected how they approached other characterization

but after the dumb questions I am really just wishing I asked about the fuck box, and whether any of that cum was real

“ahem yes Mister Pattinson I must ask, was any of that your cum”

that baby question was addressed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc2ducSgpdc

short version - they did not get on with the baby that was cast (it cried all the time) (actually they cried all the time, it was twins) and CD & RP made a panicked phone call to a friend of RP who had a baby that liked him. That's the baby in the film. the mother was there all the time.

awesome, thanks!

If I had to ask a question I'd ask about how RP's buzzcut helped him inhabit the character. RP has amazing hair but he is very connected to it, which you can see in the interview. He's always playing with it, pulling it and smoothing it, I'd do the same if I had that hair. His hair helps him find the answers. What did no hair do?

he was wearing a hat tonight and didn’t touch his head much at all!

he's bewitching. perhaps tonight he had a haircut for another character in another film.

nah, he was just dressed all casual-like

I meant under the hat, perhaps he had another haircut for another character in a future film we will see that he'd rather disguise. either because it would give something away or because he basically didn't want to be seen with it.

I think he is lazy and owns a dozen black baseball caps tbh

he can look at me with those lazy eyes all day long.

that distant “just rolled out of bed at 5pm and it’s raining outside but A24 is making me show up at the AMC” stare

I liked this interview w/ Pattinson and Denis

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/interview-claire-denis-and-robert-pattinson-on-the-making-of-high-life/

If I had to ask a question I'd ask about how RP's buzzcut helped him inhabit the character. RP has amazing hair but he is very connected to it, which you can see in the interview. He's always playing with it, pulling it and smoothing it, I'd do the same if I had that hair. His hair helps him find the answers. What did no hair do?

― Acting Crazy (Instrumental) (jed_), Friday, April 5, 2019 1

otm, been thinking about this for days

he mentions in that intvw that he wanted to go completely hairless!

I misread the question originally and must admit it is good

I think he is lazy and owns a dozen black baseball caps tbh

I heard an interview w/ the tech consultant for vampire baseball in Twilight, and he said Pattinson was by far the least athletic cast member involved. Chain-smokin' away...

I should have said baseball-style caps, they're just all black without logos

sorry for false deployment of the baseball signal

i understand, just cuz he played a guy from Queens for the Safdies i didn't expect logos

i really hate that High Life is being called a "masterpiece." Insane.

can't wait to see Stuart and the boys play the Osc*rs next year

Staples has directed a film that opens here shortly

goin to the Angelika screening tonite

i really hate that High Life is being called a "masterpiece." Insane.

I would reverse that opinion lol, no idea what the appeal of LTSI was meant to be and am utterly mystified by its following

Woodshock in Space

To my surprise, a success, albeit a limited and uncharming one. The translated English sounds like translated English; if I feel generous in my review, I'll say this works coming out of the mouths of people who've been in space too long and have forgotten the rhythms of their own language.

the dialogue struck me as considerably less awkward than some other first English features I've seen tbh

It's fascinating how the Twilight stars made their first films with French directors who also wrote stilted scripts for'em.

their first films for Assayas and Denis, if it's not clear.

I'm almost sad that Pattinson is going to be in the new Nolan opus, he made so many Twilight fans sit through so much arthouse fare over the last few years in an unbroken streak

High Life isn’t her first film in English, at least half of Trouble Every Day is too

“She was beautiful and half from the Caribbean, and I thought yes! I was impressed by that.”

She’s from Willesden

they are equally terrible.

I liked this a lot. Very strange and creepy rhythm to the whole thing. Binoche looks demonic skulking about the ship while everyone else is passed out. The ending was quite beautiful.

it's not reactions to the sex i'm dreading ... it's people saying the following: "that was COMPLETELY POINTLESS!"

called this wrong: not nearly as many walkouts as the beach bum and the ones we did get were over the sex after all. lobby vibe afterwards was more "...huh" than exasperated

i liked it more as it went along but did fight sleep for a few stretches. however i was delighted from the beginning by the loving use of code page 437 (or something v like it) for the computer interfaces: my kind of retro

also loved binoche's hair

Finally got around to this now that its on amazon prime, thought it was ok but had a very hard time not switching it off during juliette binoche's scene in the dildo box, one of the silliest sex scenes this side of The Room

Technically impressive--the sound design is excellent, and I love the junkiness of their vessel, particularly in the exterior shots--but I fidgeted through much of the running time and ultimately didn't get a whole lot out of it. The fuckbox was just Clooney's dildo bicycle thing from Burn After Reading, only not meant to be funny.

Yea this was a letdown even though Pattinson was good

I’ve missed some of his more acclaimed work of recent years (Cosmopolis, Good Time) but this is definitely his best performance that I’ve seen.

"you don't have an engine in your ass!"

Haha, I love that. I also loved this film.