“Bastards” (2013)
Apart from “High Life” and “Trouble Every Day,” “Bastards” might be Claire Denis’ most pessimistic film. This woozy, nightmarish urban noir unfolds under a lens of suffocating dismay, telling a timeless tale of class antipathy that’s seamlessly wedded to another one of the director’s studies of personal unraveling. “Bastards,” originally titled “Les Salauds,” is Denis’ attempt at blending old-school thriller elements (there are heavy shades of both Lynch and Hitchcock here) with her own incomparable style. The mood of “Bastards” is dour and downcast, a far cry from the more ravishing likes of “35 Shots of Rum” and “Beau Travail.” Here, Denis depicts a ruinous landscape of disrepair: the physical milieu in which “Bastards” unfolds seems almost permanently grey. The “plot,” insomuch as it matters, is a tense mystery about a working-class Frenchman who comes to learn the sinister circumstances behind his brother-in-law’s suicide and a seemingly unrelated instance of sexual assault. The nihilism of “Bastards” will no doubt wear on some, and there’s no doubt that this is one of the director’s more disjointed movies, resisting standard linear plotting at every turn. Still, “Bastards” remains a must-see for any Denis die-hard, with its immersive cinematography from regular Denis collaborator Agnes Godard, its superbly haunting score by Stuart A. Staples, and a quietly fearsome lead turn from the imposing Vincent Lindon.
“Let The Sunshine In” (2018)
Upon first glance, “Let The Sunshine In” may look like Denis’ most traditional film: a distinctly feminine spin on an urbane French character piece like Olivier Assayas’ “Summer Hours.” Like “Summer Hours,” “Let The Sunshine In” is about artists. In this particular case, it’s about a jaded, divorced artist named Isabella, played with abundant grace by one of the great living treasures of French cinema, Juliette Binoche. “Let The Sunshine In” languidly, casually observes Isabella’s romantic life as she sleeps with an assortment of men, all the while searching for love, sexual connection, and perhaps even something more than that. While “Let The Sunshine In” is one of Denis’ most effervescent films, it’s also an astonishingly candid exploration of female desire from a director who’s more or less an expert on the subject. There are none of the more aggressively alienating qualities of “Trouble Every Day,” for instance, and Denis’ film doesn’t really traffic in the mesmeric nonlinear poetry of something like “White Material,” although the movie’s deployment of Etta James’ “At Last” nearly rivals “Beau Travail” for its immortal use of “Rhythm Of The Night.” “Let The Sunshine In” is sexy, kindhearted, and unassumingly lovely: a rich and insightful look at how even those mired in the doldrums of middle age are capable of rediscovering themselves. – NL
“High Life” (2019)
Claire Denis has always been at one with the abyss; she’s someone who courts the concept of nothingness with a certain unaffected bravery. The images she creates are so pregnant with meaning – and, in the case of “High Life,” suffused with such primitive dread – that they often counteract pedantic scholarly analysis, instead opting to blossom in the hidden corners of a viewer’s subconscious. “High Life” is the director’s English-language debut, a beautiful, hideous sci-fi brain tease that stars Robert Pattinson, “Suspiria’s” Mia Goth, and Outkast’s resident genius Andre Benjamin, among others. When examined with scrutiny, “High Life” reveals itself as both a slinky distillation of, and also a forceful expansion upon, Denis’ very specific set of interests. Its protagonists are colonizers who are infiltrating the vast, unfeeling chasm of deep space. The mood is one of contemplative, bottled-up cosmic despair. The carnal subtext is alternately hot, heavy, and horrific. “High Life’s” storytelling is defiantly elliptical, the sex and violence are fervent to an almost Cronenbergian degree, and the whole thing ends on a glorious, exalted, synapse-frying note that sees humankind hurtling toward the void with something approximating acceptance. “High Life” ends on an image of stunning celestial beauty, suggesting that surrendering to oblivion my not be such a disgraceful fate as some of us have imagined. – NL
— Previous contributions from Oliver Lyttelton, Rodrigo Perez, Sam Mac,