Love against a background of political tragedy. Winner of the Grand Prix at the 75th Cannes Film Festival.
Trish (Margaret Qualley) is a young American journalist. She arrives in Nicaragua, where there is unrest ahead of the presidential elections, in order to write about torture, kidnappings, and other terrible human rights abuses. Her attempts to describe the seamy side of life in Nicaragua is not welcomed by the luxury travel journal where she works or the local authorities. On the day she learns that she is to be arrested she meets a rich British man called Daniel (Joe Alwyn), who says he works for an oil company. They fall in love and try to leave the country together, despite being followed by the local secret police and the CIA, who are also mixed up in the local political situation.
Stars at Noon is based on the eponymous novel by the American writer Denis Johnson about the Nicaraguan revolution in the mid-1980s. Claire Denis, one the boldest voices of French independent cinema, transfers the action to the 2020s. She comments expansively on what was happening in the world at the time the movie came out, whether it be the Coronavirus epidemic, corruption or the meddling of governments and corporations in the domestic politics of certain countries. Denis used the deceptive framework of melodrama to approach these hot topics. On the screen Nicaragua is a space of total lawlessness and fear that envelopes the local population, the generals, the secret police, and Trish and Daniel. Regardless of the passionate and emotional relationship of the characters, the link between them is ephemeral. The lovers are simultaneously victims and exponents of the first world, which, according to Denis, uses poorer countries for its own interests, extracting resources and thoughtlessly interfering in domestic politics.
The film will be screened in French, English, and Spanish with Russian subtitles.
Stars at Noon
Director Claire Denis
France, Panama, USA, 2022. 135 min.
18+