Claire Denis Explains Failed Relationship With Zadie Smith On ‘High Life’: “There Was Not One Word We Could Share”

Claire Denis is one of the best filmmakers working today, period. However, no one ever said she was the easiest to work with. And she opens up about that fact in a brutally honest press conference after her upcoming film “High Life” screened at the New York Film Festival. And to illustrate her point, the filmmaker brought up a bit of a contentious relationship she had with the film’s earliest collaborators.

Before Denis’ regular co-writers Jean-Pol Fargeau and Geoff Cox came aboard to help the filmmaker bring her vision to fruition, she was originally going to help co-write the script with novelist Nick Laird and his wife, and also an acclaimed novelist in her own right, Zadie Smith. However, as Denis describes, even with that much combined talent, the film just wasn’t coming together the way she envisioned.

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“I met Zadie in London with a producer. I met her with her husband, because she wanted to share the work with Nick Laird, her husband,” Denis said (via Vulture). “She was beautiful and half from the Caribbean, and I thought yes! I was impressed by that.”

That excitement then turned to dread when Denis realized that Smith and her would disagree on almost every aspect of the film. “We were so opposed on every idea,” said Denis. “There was not a word we could share.”

The filmmaker brings up one point of contention between herself and Smith that would spell the end of their working relationship. For those that don’t know, “High Life” tells the story of a group of criminals sent on a mission into space. “Nothing against her, but she wanted the people of the ship to — she wanted them to return to Earth. ‘Going home,’ she kept telling me. I said, ‘What the fuck do you mean, going home?’ There is no one alive there, you know?” explained Denis.

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Another disagreement was over the title of the film, which Denis wanted to call “High Life,” whereas Smith though “A New Life” was better. The filmmaker, of course, won that argument and continued the project with new writers. At the end of the day, Denis says that her and Smith just aren’t people that will ever see eye to eye, at least creatively.

“And I’ve read her books, in French, in English…We are on the same planet, but not living the same life, for sure,” she concluded.

“High Life” will hit theaters courtesy of A24 but a date has not been announced.