“High Life” had a lengthy gestation period. Denis spoke of the origins of the project.
I wrote it a long time ago. An English producer wanted to know if I could do an English-speaking film. I said, ‘Maybe, if it doesn’t take place where I could as easily do it in French. And in space, they speak only Russian or English. It was a joke to have the idea of a femme fatale in space!
Denis has a particular, generous gaze when it comes to bodies. How did the casting of Robert Pattinson come about?
“I wanted a man in his ’40s, because this is someone on death row — it is not an optimistic moment for him. He is tired of my life. I originally thought of Philip Seymour Hoffman, but he was tired of life and died. The agent and casting director asked me to meet Robert Pattinson, who I thought was too young and iconic. But as the project took so long to get funded, Robert would come to me and say, ‘I’m getting older every month!’ I realized that I couldn’t make the film without him.”
“I was surprised by him. I’m a very tactile but not spontaneous director. His interest in filmmaking is great and real. He was ready for everything I proposed. He is the easiest actor I’ve worked with. He is part of the brotherhood — I want to work with him more, as I do with Juliette Binoche. They get involved and are not afraid — they have no fear about a weird project.”
On her work on the film with artist Olafur Eliasson.
In 2014 Eliasson and filmmaker Denis met to discuss their common fascination with phenomena that have not yet been fully explained by science – such as black holes. Their shared interest in abstraction and those conversations begat the 2014 short film “Contact,” which if you’ve seen “High Life” you’ll know is a bit of a test run for that movie’s celestial parts.
“What inspired me most was the golden, yellow light he invented. It is what you find if you see inside a black hole. It is extraordinary when human skin is in this light — it loses color and becomes bronze. It is almost a clinical transformation. The end shot is not digital — this is when it opens up to be completely white. This contrasts with the rest of the film: the reddish uniform for the prisoners. This goes against usual science fiction, with its shiny whiteness that suggests purity, conquest, glory. I wanted a darker hue, a shadow.”
[Watch: Contact – A film by Claire Denis]
Of the sexual violence and plotting in the film,
“People in jail have a violent relationship to sex, as they have none apart from masturbation and rape. The main character is a guy who has moved away from that —— he does not go to the so-called ‘f*ckbox’ (what we called it on set). All this sexual frustration will lead to a certain kind of violence. Pattinson’s character decided to save the freedom in him, to keep away from that. With Sir Lancelot and the legend of King Arthur, there is a need to be pure and chaste, and chastity is a strange movement of protection. It is intriguing what it brings to the knight or prisoner — is it purity? Is it to resist oppression? The rape scene in the film was down to young men who could not take it anymore. They are jumping into the void saying, ‘OK I’m doing it.’ There’s a suicidal tendency in this violence; it’s not just sexual.”
“I have no plan when I start a script, no desire to confuse people or to build a labyrinthine story. In ‘High Life,’ what came first were the father and baby. I’m not a tricky person and I regret it sometimes — I’m too chaotic to build a story normally.”
Denis spoke of her directorial style, her use of mise-en-scène and choreography.
“When I say my directing is tactile, it’s that I speak with actors and find the right mood and reason. The camera is the choreographer that needs to caress, to be close and respectful, to be together with the actors. Even a long shot far away in a corridor produces momentum — to stay there in a static shot, it’s choreography because of the duration of time, of staying there. I never use a camera to judge but to be a companion.”
“I’ve been watching films and reading books to produce the prison architecture. It is very special because the corridor is the spine of the jail where the guard can walk. This is how I rendered a jail in space.”
