
Takes place beyond the solar system in a future that seems like the present. About a group of criminals who accept a mission in space to become the subjects of a human reproduction experiment. They find themselves in the most unimaginable situation after a storm of cosmic rays hit the ship.... (Full plot summary below)
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Takes place beyond the solar system in a future that seems like the present. About a group of criminals who accept a mission in space to become the subjects of a human reproduction experiment. They find themselves in the most unimaginable situation after a storm of cosmic rays hit the ship.
Leave your thoughts about High Life.
| VoxAlissa WilkinsonThe film is confounding but wholly original. |
| Little White LiesSophie Monks KaufmanThe lure of intense mystery that beguiles you into trying to solve it again and again; the transference of an intoxication that makes you feel physically different afterwards. It sounds hyperbolic to describe art as having such power, but surely the reason we care about art is a belief that such power exists. High Life is too layered, too ambiguous, too potent to be about any one thing. |
| Sight and SoundSimran HansThe gravitational pull of sex, death and the void is palpable. |
| NOW TorontoKevin RitchieThe results are often uncomfortable and frequently mind-blowing. |
| CinemalogueRubin SafayaIt's clear that Denis had, at least vaguely, wanted to examine the erosion of humanity in claustrophobic conditions, but she ham-fists out that tune monophonically-death, rape, violence, paternalistic love. |
| AWFJ Women on FilmAlexandra Heller-NicholasHigh Life is an accomplished, masterful work by one of contemporary cinema's most vital visionaries, where questions of ritual and taboo are brought to life in a way quite unlike anywhere else in cinema history. |
| CineVueChristopher MachellWhat Denis’ film is concerned with is the visceral bodily experience and the claustrophobia of living in the middle of the infinite. If outer space is a cold and vast external of nothingness, then there is also an interior space of bodies, living, writhing, and fluid. |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawAs with so many of Denis’ films, the point is to contrive an overwhelmingly powerful mood and moment, an almost physiological sensation, this one incubated in the vast, cold reaches of space. It throbbed and itched with me long after the film was over. |
| RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzWith its brutal violence, explicit sex, and up-close views of blood, sweat, urine, and semen, it is proudly an R-rated film, verging on NC-17—though the X-rating, which was discontinued by the MPAA almost 30 years ago, might feel more appropriate. |
| The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzBy twisting around preconceptions of what an outer-space epic should be, French auteur Claire Denis returns to the fertile ground of her Trouble Every Day era, using genre to dig beneath themes that others would only treat as skin-deep. |