High Life

An ambitious misfire, High Life follows Robert Pattinson’s Monte as he and his young daughter attempt to survive within deep-space isolation. Filmmaker Claire Denis opens High Life with a striking first act revolving around the almost silent exploits of the central character, with the effectiveness of this stretch certainly heightened by Pattinson’s intriguing, charismatic performance and a sporadic emphasis on unexpectedly disturbing interludes and images. The promising atmosphere persists in spite of Pattinson’s mumbling, incoherent voice over, although, perhaps inevitably, there does reach a point at which the viewer’s inability to decipher any spoken dialogue or narration becomes, to put it mildly, problematic – with the ensuing lack of context transforming the picture’s midsection into an increasingly oppressive and interminable experience. It’s a vibe compounded by the various characters’ penchant for behaving erratically and nonsensically (to say the least), which does ensure that one is generally unable to figure out what’s happening from scene to scene (and this is to say nothing of the flat-out baffling climax). The end result is an art-house disaster that really does feel as though it should have fared much, much better, and it does seem apparent, ultimately, that Denis was the absolute worse choice to take the reins of a sci-fi storyline.

* out of ****