Stars at Noon film review — sensual thriller with superior sex scenes

When might Covid be far enough in the rear-view mirror to become mere period detail? Now says the sultry new Claire Denis movie Stars at Noon. The film takes place in Nicaragua in 2021, the trappings of the pandemic a mundane constant. The source material is Denis Johnson’s novel, the tale of a young American woman in Sandinista Managua in 1984. The film keeps the anti-heroine — here called Trish Johnson (Margaret Qualley) — but nudges the timeframe forward. Now, it feels like a coolly observed irony that masking protocols are tightly followed in a country where so much else is chaos.

Amid rolling shortages (meat, milk, Coca-Cola), the only reliable fix is US dollars. For the jagged, restless spirit that is Claire Denis, working in Latin America is a first, but a setting in a country shaped by others is not. The director’s landmark 1988 debut Chocolat took place in French colonial Cameroon. And life in the raw has always been her canvas.

Trish claims to be a journalist. Others are sceptical. Still, there must be a reason her passport has been confiscated. Either way, she is marooned, stuck seeking air-con and a short-term upturn in fortunes. “I’ll sleep with you for a price,” she tells a stranger, an approach Denis presents non-judgmentally as that of a woman out of options. And into this black-market life steps an opaque Englishman: Daniel (Joe Alwyn), staying in the international hotel where Trish hopes to blag a buffet breakfast. 

The two are soon a pair. Their initial connection feels tied up with money and lust, and perhaps the fact that there is little else to do. (The WiFi is out as well.) But eventually, something deeper stirs — on more than one level. Even then, though, the movie can work best in the bedroom. (Denis shoots a good sex scene.)

The match of actors with material is not the film’s strength. Qualley is a vibrant presence, but borderline zany too. She simply never reads as the kind of woman who would say she came to Managua because “I want to know the exact dimensions of hell.”

The pacing will try your patience too. But Denis also gives the film a seductive ambience: a loosey goosey air of improvisation, and a languid, rainy-season crackle. The movie has the feel of the kind of sensual thriller that a generation ago might have played late on Sunday night TV. Like the rain, politics gets everywhere; menace supplied by the CIA and the modern reality of Daniel Ortega’s sad, soured revolution. Denis is too worldly to pick sides. She just watches the lost souls in the middle.

★★★☆☆

On digital download in the UK from June 16