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

Claire Denis is one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, but don’t let her hear you say that. She’s not crazy about compliments, the publicist warns me in the lobby of the hotel, minutes before our interview is scheduled to begin. Denis has come to Chicago to talk about her new movie, the hypnotic science-fiction drama High Life, starring Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, and a multinational supporting cast as death-row inmates sent on an interstellar suicide mission to the galaxy’s nearest black hole. It is, like most of what the French director has made over the last three decades, bewitching and befuddling, rewarding multiple viewings, even as it refuses to do the interpretative heavy lifting for its audience. This is an opinion I will keep to myself during our 15-minute conversation, as it probably qualifies as a compliment—one of many I could use to annoy the filmmaker behind Beau Travail and Friday Night and 35 Shots Of Rum, to name a few of her (and this new century’s) most vital films.
High Life marks Denis’ English-language debut. That, coupled with the movie star at its center, probably accounts for the relatively wider release it’s receiving here in the States—and, by extension, for the multi-city publicity tour distributor A24 has arranged for the director, who spent a few days this month hopping around the country, talking to critics and journalists, sometimes with Pattinson in tow. Denis, as a general rule, does not suffer fools: She has a reputation for taking lazy interviewers to task, and for calmly but firmly shutting down unproductive lines of questioning. An anecdote from this very tour has already achieved something like legendary status. After a recent screening of High Life, someone in the audience accused Denis of not writing strong female characters, to which she reportedly replied: “What the fuck? I’m not a social worker.” It’s the kind of perfect Q&A retort you live to see an artist issue, at least up until the moment it’s you tossing out the Qs.
But when seated across from her, Denis is not quite so intimidating. She will push back against the premise of a question, as she does at least once during our discussion. But she is thoughtful and personable and frank about the work. At one point, she apologizes for her English, which is unnecessary because it’s very good. I end up wishing we had more time, or perhaps that I had come prepared with a deeper line of inquiry. At the end, as I’m leaving, she asks me if I like the music in High Life, which is composed by the band Tindersticks, as most of the soundtracks to her films are. I tell her I always love their scores for her movies, happy to have smuggled in at least one compliment.
The A.V. Club: This is, in some respects, an extreme film. You’re occasionally putting the characters in compromising positions—
Claire Denis: Maybe the situation could be compromising. But the film presents it as beauty. I don’t think I’m compromising the actors, maybe just the characters.
AVC: You see beauty in High Life? There’s horror in it, too.
CD: Yes, but also beauty. The horror is not in the rape scene. It’s in having to throw the crew into the void because they’re dead. This for me is the horror. I don’t think the sex scenes are horror, honestly.
AVC: There are English actors in this film. There’s a German actor. A French movie star. An American musician…
CD: And a very famous Polish actress [Agata Buzek].