Wednesday, April 16, 2025

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Claire Denis Talks ‘High Life,’ The Taboos & Sexual Violence Of Her Career & More [Rotterdam MasterClass Conversation]

Mr. Field produces a clip of Denis’s ostensible vampire horror “Trouble Every Day,” which juxtaposes two lovers in a dingy, darkened house with two lovers in apparently blissful exchange on a commercial flight, ending with a shot of sleeping passengers, mouths agape like the dead. Denis shrugs and says, “If we have to…”
“Sleeping men is something that happens on a plane — it is terrifying. The couple on earth are in hell, in an inferno — it is night on earth. A man has been killed. The couple in love are drinking champagne. The character played by Vincent Gallo is going into the inferno himself, although he hopes he isn’t.”

“Vincent is a great intelligent guy and director, and it isn’t difficult to tell him what to do. The intimacy is such that it seems they are alone on the plane. They are not paying attention to the others. It was easy with Vincent. I met him before he was actor when doing a short film in New York. Even then I was amazed by his way to incarnate a character, to be alive in the image. He is very fascinating.”

“Pattinson is not completely conventional. In “Twilight,” both of the actors [Pattinson and Kristen Stewart] were young, intense, mysterious. They lent their beauty to the film but inside there was something else, another wish. Do you agree?”

‘Of course!’ resounds the audience. Mr. Field brings us onto taboo and the relationship between sex and the body, between tenderness and violence.
“I don’t understand how this combination comes together in my mind. Taboo in films shows me the secrets of life. When I was 13 or 14, I saw films as showing desire, sex, relationships, even if not completely visible they are there. This was the tension of film. This is true for violence — I saw killing for the first time on film. I’m not an exhibitionist; I’m interested in the meaning of exhibitionism.”

We are shown the erotic encounter on a stairwell from “Bastards,” emphasizing the rhythm of edits, the fragments of a scene largely without dialogue. We’re asked to perceive how music relates to the movement of hands and the body.
“I did location scouting. It was written for the staircase, but I decided not to do a sequence shot. Time was important with the babysitting waiting in the scene. So I shot it piece by piece, moment by moment — it starts when the woman takes the shoes off. It was like walking on a naked sheet and she had already started to undress.”

On working with long-time collaborator Michel Subor,
“He is an extraordinary looking person. He represents the guy from the dark side of the room.”

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