Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
This is bullshit to me,Claire Denissays when I call her an artist.
She hates the word, and hates it being used to describe her.
I never think what Im doing is something artistic, she grimaces.
Cinema is something very carnal, very concrete.
Its not difficult and it only requires very little technique.
This isnt false modesty.
Deniss pictures are awash in artistry, but shes a ground-level director.
She doesnt make grandiose statements, and she doesnt stage grandiose scenes.
At the same time, a more abstract and elliptical strain runs through Deniss work.
Her films are filled with mood-setting, nonnarrative passages.
On the surface,High Lifedoesnt quite seem like any other Claire Denis film.
And now shes made a science-fiction movie, but doesnt want to call it science-fiction either.
I wanted it to look like a prison film, Denis tells me.
Its also, like many of her movies, about the powerful, twisted bonds of family.
A man alone in space, with a certain throw in of morality, she reflects.
AsHigh Lifeopens, we see Monte teaching his baby daughter the wordtaboo.
She doesnt know who else to love, Denis observes.
To convey all this without veering into sensationalism requires a delicate balance, to say the least.
And that requires actors who can express unspoken anxieties with merely a glance, or gesture.
Sometimes, its an undercurrent, a faint whisper of unease.
Then there are the estranged teenage siblings ofNenette et Boni(1996).
Much of the film unfolds through tight close-ups of faces and hands.
It is both lovely and unsettling.
(This is another thing that makes her recent rise somewhat surprising, though certainly welcome.)
She seems to love the idea of beauty emerging in the most unlikely places.
(The men are played by Alex Descas and Isaach de Bankole, two Denis regulars.)
The people become crazy about the way they take care of it.
Meanwhile, the music of Benjamin Brittens operaBilly Buddplays on the soundtrack, lending everything a moody grandeur.
The style ofBeau Travailwas dictated partly by necessity while she was shooting in Djibouti.
We had no money and we had four weeks to shoot, she recalls.
The editor said, Oh my God, this scene is missing, that scene is missing!
But I saw that it was not a problem.
The strength ofdoing itis very important in film.
If worse comes to worst, you cannot sit down and complain.
I will accept a hole in the story.
Even better, Denis says, is to put those holes in deliberately.
I discovered I liked to write ellipses.
If a moment is stretched, or something is missing, you have to jump a little bit.
It gives you a different kind of emotion.
It also allows you to reflect a little bit on what youre watching.
It is also surprisingly earthy, particularly inBinoches performanceas the mad scientist determined to force her wards to procreate.
I was unhappy with the way she was filmed before, Denis says.
She deserved more beauty and more wildness.
We wanted her to be very fierce and beautiful.
This is a broken man who largely refuses connection, or pleasure.
Living a monklike existence, he is the one crew member who refuses to use the Fuckbox.
