“We were afraid of the void”: Claire Denis on working with Robert Pattinson and navigating High Life’s deep space

AVC: How important was it to the story you’re telling that the cast be international? Or were these just the right people for the roles?

CD: I wanted this to be an English-language film. Due to the story, it had to be. Or it could have been a Russian-language film, but I don’t speak Russian. So I chose actors that speak English. I was shooting in Germany, and I knew this actor, Lars [Eidinger], very well. I asked him if he wanted to be an English-speaking character, and the same with Agata. Mia [Goth] and Ewan [Mitchell] both speak English, and André Benjamin is an American. It was not difficult. It was the best casting I could have. [Pause.] The baby is English, too.

AVC: Why English or Russian?

CD: The language was a necessity, because in space today you either speak Russian or English. Or American, let’s say. And soon Chinese, I guess. But also I wanted them to be criminals sent to space as lab rats. So I picked a country where the death sentence still exists. In Europe, it does not exist anymore. That doesn’t mean that we’ve solved all the problems of violence. But for me, the death penalty is the last barrier of what you can do to life. I think that if killing someone is the law, that’s really a problem. Me, I know I can kill someone driving my car by accident. When it’s law and order, it’s different.

AVC: How did the interpretation of Dr. Dibs change when Juliette Binoche came aboard? Her version is kind of a mad scientist.

CD: I never thought of Juliette when I was writing the script. I thought about Patricia Arquette. But in the end, when we were ready to shoot, Patricia couldn’t do the movie anymore. She wasn’t free. And I had just finished a film with Juliette [2017’s Let The Sunshine In]. And she said, “Hey, Claire, I can do it.” So I reinvented the character with Juliette. She was not the same character Patricia would have played. She would have still been a criminal, but different.

AVC: Robert Pattinson is the first Hollywood movie star you’ve cast in one of your films.

CD: Yes. But the film before I made with Juliette, the ending is with Gérard Depardieu. He is also a big star.

AVC: When you work with these big stars, are you playing with or trying to subvert their image or public persona?

CD: Oh, no. With Robert, I was a little afraid. I thought maybe that he was too young, maybe too iconic. But we got along so well, and he understood everything so well. I forgot who he was. With Robert, it’s easy to forget. He is very graceful and easy to work with. He’s very intelligent. You don’t spend every week going, “Oh my god, I’m working with a movie star.”

AVC: He doesn’t come in with a lot of vanity.

CD: Not at all. And he’s interested in making movies. He’s always watching. He likes the work.

AVC: I have a boring question about financing.

CD: Ah, financing. We were greatly helped by an American, Andrew Lauren, who really made the film possible. It was a French-German co-production. And a little bit of England, because the first producer was English, and a little bit of Poland.

AVC: That’s not the way it’s always been for you. There’s a lot more companies involved now. Has that changed the way you make films?

CD: I mean, a French-speaking movie I can do with French money in France because I don’t make big-budget movies. I understood a long time ago that it would be better for me not to need too much money for my films.

AVC: You don’t consider High Life science fiction.

CD: Because everything in it is already known! The existence of black holes, the energy in a black hole… I’ve done the reading, and I’m not inventing aliens or creating a new space colony or anything. I love stories like that, but it was not the purpose of this film.

AVC: So you weren’t studying other sci-fi movies or novels?

CD: I was thinking about something that could happen.

AVC: Your films, during production, often leap around a number of different locations, which makes High Life something of an outlier. By its nature, as a movie set aboard a spacecraft, it was shot mainly in a single location. Was that restrictive or was it freeing in its own way?

CD: It was helping us in a way, to be always within that ship. We’d get to the studio in early morning and leave at night. We were in a different world. And even when he did the exteriors [in outer space], with black drapes, it was frightening. We were afraid of the void.

AVC: Do you think some of the cabin fever of the story seeped into the production?

CD: Yes, sure.

AVC: Your films tend to avoid exposition and telling the audience through dialogue what’s going on. But there is a scene aboard a train in High Life that does just that, with two characters essentially explaining the premise.

CD: This scene was always in the script. While we were working on it, I went to India with my co-writer, Jean-Pol Fargeau, and we met Victor Banerjee. And I love him as an actor. And we were telling him about the film we were writing, and I love the way he speaks English, so I said, “Let’s have a scene like that.” He is the one who says they will never return.

AVC: “We’ll be bone and dust while they’re still hurtling through space.”

CD: He is the one that knows that because of the speed of light, time on Earth will pass differently than it does for the characters on the ship.

AVC: High Life, like many of your other movies, plays around with chronology, sometimes unfolding out of order.

CD: It was in the script, and every version of the script. It was so important to me that the film start with the garden and the baby and [Monte] teaching her how to walk down the corridor. And the flashbacks are in his mind, thinking back on the crew and what happened before. The present is him and his daughter.

AVC: But is that always how the nonlinear structure originates, right there in the script and never in post-production? I’m thinking about The Intruder.

CD: Yes, always in the script.

AVC: High Life sometimes looks like a film about the anxiety of having children when we’re hurtling toward oblivion.

CD: Yeah, of course, [Monte] never thought he was going to be a father. But suddenly, he realizes that for maybe the first time in his life, he’s free. Free to love, free to be him, free to hold.

AVC: Are you hopeful about the future?

CD: I think so. It’s like [Monte] with the baby. When you see young people, life is strong in them. So I’m hopeful, yes. Maybe I should not be, but I am.