High Life (2018 film)

High Life is a 2018 science fiction horror film written and directed by Claire Denis with Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche in the lead roles. It's Denis' first film in the English language and was co-written by her long-time collaborator Jean-Pol Fargeau and Geoff Cox.

The film stars Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche in the lead roles. It focuses on a group of criminals who are tricked into believing they will be freed if they participate in a mission to travel on a spaceship towards a black hole to find an alternate energy source while being sexually experimented on by the scientists on board. French physicist and black hole expert Aurélien Barrau has been part of the project as a scientific expert. Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has designed the spacecraft for the film and it is his first cinematic experience.

High Life had its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival on 9 September 2018.

Plot
A group of criminals are sent on an alternative energy finding mission in space. Monte, one of the criminals on board previously had a daughter, Willow, against his will through artificial insemination, but comes to love her as they near the end of their journey.

Cast

 * Robert Pattinson as Monte
 * Juliette Binoche as Dr. Dibs
 * Mia Goth as Boyse
 * Lars Eidinger as Chandra
 * André Benjamin as Tcherny
 * Agata Buzek as Nansen
 * Ewan Mitchell as Ettore
 * Jessie Ross as Willow (Teenager)
 * Scarlett Lindsey as Willow (Baby)
 * Claire Tran as Mink
 * Gloria Obianyo as Elektra

Production
Claire Denis had the idea of the project in her mind for fifteen years. Talking about it she said that, "I had a screenplay which was naturally in English, because the story takes place in space and, I don't know why, but for me, people speak English – or Russian or Chinese – but definitely not French in space."

Initially novelist Nick Laird co-wrote the screenplay for the film along with Denis, Fargeau and Cox. Additionally, Laird's wife Zadie Smith contributed to early drafts of the English version of the screenplay. But due to creative differences between Denis and Smith, Laird and Smith dropped out of the project as screenwriters, but Laird later served as the consultant for the script.

Claire Denis went to the European Space Agency's Astronaut Centre in Cologne to learn about human spaceflight exploration before the film started shooting.

Casting
Denis thought of Vincent Gallo for the lead role during early stages of the project. She wrote the film keeping Philip Seymour Hoffman in mind and was saddened by his untimely death. Later the project caught the attention of Robert Pattinson and according to Denis, "One day Robert Pattinson contacted the person who was doing the English casting. I was intrigued but I thought he was too young. Every time I went to London to meet some actors, he was there. His desire to work with me has never faltered. And now he is a little less young and it's perfect." Further talking about his casting, she added, "When I saw Twilight, I liked it immediately because he has heartrending charisma. It's strange, though, because it would be difficult to imagine anyone more unlike Philip Seymour Hoffman physically, but Robert is very enigmatic, with a powerful presence. He gives off an aura that immediately makes you want to film him." Pattinson, talking about the film, described his character as an astronaut and said, "...he's a criminal who volunteers for a mission toward a black hole, but he realizes along the way that a doctor on board also wants to do sexual experimentation with humans in space."

In late 2015, Patricia Arquette and Mia Goth joined the cast of the film. In September 2017, Arquette dropped out of the project while the rest of the cast, including Juliette Binoche and rapper Andre 3000, were also announced.

Filming
Principal photography for the film began in Cologne, Germany on 18 August 2017. Filming wrap up in late October 2017.

Release
Following its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film will compete in main competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in late September 2018. The film will have its theatrical release in France on 7 November 2018. A24 acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film.

Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 86% based on 35 reviews, and an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "High Life is as visually arresting as it is challenging, confounding, and ultimately rewarding - which is to say it's everything film fans expect from director Claire Denis." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a grade of A−, describing it as "a pensive and profound study of human life on the brink of the apocalypse." Jessica Kiang of Variety called it "extraordinary, difficult, hypnotic, and repulsive". Charles Bramesco of The Guardian gave the film 5 stars out of 5, saying, "Denis has turned her sights on sci-fi, reconfiguring its familiar components to create a startlingly fresh engagement with the question of what it means to be human." Steve MacFarlane of Slant Magazine wrote: "The film asks down-and-dirty questions about what really resides beneath thousands of years of human progress, a savage and haunting antidote to the high-minded idealism of movies like Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Ridley Scott's The Martian."