It’s been a red-hot 2022 for director Claire Denis. Four years removed from sci-fi drama High Life, she returned with Silver Bear Award winner Both Sides of the Blade, followed last summer by Stars at Noon, which took the Grand Prix Award at Cannes. The latter film is clearly a big one for A24, who have released a new trailer ahead of its awards season release next month.
Stars at Noon is led by Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn (formerly Robert Pattinson who dropped out), joined by John C. Reilly, Danny Ramirez, and Benny Safdie. The story is based on Denis Johnson’s novel about a woman who falls in love with an Englishman while trapped in Nicaragua during the pandemic. But hopes of escape ar disrupted when she realizes just how much danger she is actually in.
The erotic tone and political backdrop give the film an old school thriller vibe. That we’re getting two Denis films in a single year, both exploring love and passion in different ways, is a real treat.
Stars at Noon opens in theaters on October 14th.
Trish is a struggling reporter in Nicaragua, hoping to score a scoop she can sell to an American magazine that wants nothing to do with her. Her passport and press card have been confiscated. At night, Trish hangs around the bar of a pre-war luxury hotel amongst established reporters who snub her. For them, she’s a hooker and a lush. One night, she spots a young man, Daniel, clearly a newcomer to the tropics. She sleeps with him for 50 bucks, but in no time, passion and sexual obsession blind them to the real dangers surrounding them. Daniel has lied. He’s working for Big Oil, not an NGO. The stakes are high, and their lives are in peril.
