High Life

Remake of DARK STAR. In John Carpenter’s classic film, the all-male crew have been locked in together for so long that almost all interest in human interaction has thoroughly dissipated, with comedic results. Here, the comedy has been removed, and the atomisation is doubled by a sense that the sexual drives are ineliminable, the upshot being that, behind the ennui, the wildness of desire mixes with the madness of despair, with tragically violent results. That may be a more accurate portrayal of the consequences of long-term incarceration, perhaps, but the paradoxical fact remains that the earlier film about boredom and insignificance remains lastingly enjoyable and worthwhile, while the more recent film about fertility, artificial reproduction and the necessity of participation induces little in the audience apart from an overwhelming sense of boredom and a feeling that significance has failed to be conjured. The scene with Juliette Binoche using a range of prostheses to bring herself to orgasm in a small enclosed room dedicated to that purpose is filmed in a way that seems like an attempt by the director to tap back into the eroticism she achieved with male bodies in BEAU TRAVAIL, but for this viewer this too was all too familiar – which is to say, all too reminiscent of the “orgasmatron” from Woody Allen’s (also classic) SLEEPER, but, once again, without the comedy.