Film

CULTURE

Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn star in Stars at Noon.

COURTESY PHOTO

Love in a hopeless place

By G eorge Elkind

She takes liquor, he takes beer.

T hat’s not a sole hard rule in Stars at N oon , but it’s a guiding principle in its central rom ance nonetheless. T he latest w ork from C laire D enis ( Beau Travail , Trouble Every D ay ) adapts novelist D enis Johnson in one of her tradem ark late-stage neo-colonial settings, w hich have to date ranged from space’s far reaches ( H igh Life to unde ned regions of French-speaking A frica ( W hite M aterial ). A s in m uch of both Johnson and D enis’s w ork, the presum ptive control of dom inant pow ers — and the privileged standpoint of its w hite characters — has begun to fray, making the lm s icara gua a kind of nether zone in w hich local resistance butts heads w ith the last dregs of strained im perial reach, and in w hich its m aladaptive expatriate leads throw m oney around w hile glancing past their backs. A m id this atm osphere, in w hich air con ditioning and good lodging prove scarce, they attem pt a kind of fugitive rom ance, a tense and troubled feat either of existing presently or looking ahead. W hatever you m ight take it for, it’s a stubborn view point either w ay.

T he leading pair here are D aniel (Joe A lw yn) and Trish (M argaret Q ualley): a shadow y, w ell-m annered English businessm an and a self-proclaim ed journalist w ho spends m ore tim e on sex w ork by the tim e we nd her. Daniel s married to an offscreen w om an, and appears relatively secure; Trish w heels about in barely-veiled precarity that’s stretched back to an unclear tim e. owever durable or fleeting her situation is, she’s still yet to accept it, insisting that things are stable and reliable in her life even as they sw irl outside her control. A s em bodied by Q ualley, an alw ays sparky actress w ith a distinctive and even visually “loud” m outh, a half-put-on form of cynicism becom es Trish’s tradem ark m ode, w ith her w orking to overpow er those around her all the m ore as her ow n situation crum bles. B ut it’s not her only register, for she delivers a rich perform ance here that careens betw een hard-bitten cynicism and an alm ost child like openness, flickering with an instability betw een w ays of being.

For m ore even-keeled but quite capable D aniel, the tricks she plies on restaurant staff and hoteliers albeit with diminishing returns) don’t quite w ork, but they also don’t seem necessary for him . H e’s know ledge able, com petent, and — m ost im portant — believes him self secure, slouching about between ne bars for o cial-seeming meet ings in a loose w hite suit. A ppearing thusly, he looks the part of colonial history incar nate, an operator w rapping cold cloak-anddagger w orkings in an all too pretty facade. ut the lm s conspiratorial action w hich, as a holdover from the book’s bygone 1980s setting, involves the C IA — proceeds w ith a m ethodical nature its characters regard m ore w ith bem usem ent than w ith fear. Its heart, nearly as m ysterious, lies in exam ining how its m ain characters, each m ore out of w ater than they realize, m anage to connect and brush against one another rom antically and otherw ise, hesitantly trusting the illogic of their feelings as they plunge into one another’s lives. W orking w ith cinem atographer Éric G autier, D enis im bues both their recurring trysts and especially Trish’s m om ents of solitude (an early m orning w alk hom e, for instance) w ith an air of attention and ethereal rem oteness that m akes each seem all the m ore pressing. Fram ing Trish and D aniel’s encounters as vulnerable excursions into a space of emotional risk, the lm casts its characters’ relationship to rom ance as of a piece w ith their expatriate status: a situa tion that, though legible along m ore plainly political lines, leaves them each out of their depth and in som e w ay exposed. In both realm s, the characters dream of them selves as being in pow er or control: a reality w hich, even w hen it isn’t plainly shifting, rem ains a constant question.

In this regard, the lm s entral meri can characters provide a m ore atm ospheric than a tactile presence, even as the relation ship between their situation and the lm s w hite leads com prises its central subject. B ut don’t m istake this for a m ore fam iliar kind of lmmaking that s ust about taking sides. D enis is attending here — and not, to be sure, w ithout som e bias — to w here she nds emotional complexity. For Denis, exam ining the fraught, and in som e w ay tantalizing, spectacle of these expatriates losing their fragile grip on pow er seem s to give her m ore to chew on, m aking for a w ork that covers parallel ground to her past w orks such as W hite M aterial and Beau Travail . A t the sam e tim e, this experience and its attendant disorientation is rendered w ith a certain tender attention, through the eyes of an elderly (D enis is 76) direc tor eyeing the errors and gesticulations of rather young people. Tw enty-seven as of this w riting (and a bit younger onscreen), Q ualley’s Trish scans as entitled, certainly, sm ug about her error-prone Spanish, and at tim es even bigoted in her eerie touting of m ilitarized A m erican authority abroad. “A re you tense?” she asks D aniel once, convey ing som ething betw een concern and hope. B ut under D enis’ directorial hand, this and each other’s outsized perform ance, w hether crass or steely, becom es a revealing gesture of its ow n.

B ut the w ould-be escape of rom antic entanglem ent blends w ith political pow er plays throughout here, w ith characters guarding and sharing inform ation in the sam e pressed m anner that early, tentative intim ate partners so often do. W hen this happens — w hether betw een Trish and D aniel or the w eb of ancillary characters who s uare off with them uite often it s done so in a respectful, oddly sporting m an ner; even w hen the characters skew hostile or m ocking, there’s som ething shared but not out-loud unacknow ledged that they all share in com m on. W hether in rom ance or the strangely im m ediate realities of expat political life, their circum stances fall victim to a kind of existential tilt, m aking control even of one’s im m ediate situation a hope less sort of phantasm . B ut even as Trish and D aniel com e together, distinct in disposi tion but resisting this sam e undertow , the plainest difference between them is in how they regard this existential peril. She rushes and he trudges, but each has m oved w ell beyond their depth, sinking tow ard a certain kind of floor.

Stars at Noon

Rated: R Run-time: 137 minutes