High Life (Denis, 2018)

Perhaps a little too on the nose for my taste but upon first watch this does feature some incredibly beguiling sections that in some ways feel totally separate from the rest of Denis' work. At points recalling the work of Cronenberg (both Crash and Scanners), the coldness and apparent sterility of the images feels strikingly distinct among her filmography. It's sorely lacking in the textural depart in my eyes, as so little of this comes across as being graspable. Even the sperm and blood don't feel real, their wetness in opposition to the almost cardboard look of the ship and the obvious flesh of its people. It's just a little to constructed feeling for my taste. 

After indulging in some dalliances with bourgeois life, this returns to more typical, in a sense, class concerns for Denis. The fact that everyone aboard the vessel is a criminal of some sort, basically forced into taking part in this experiment - the lowest members of a society relegated to be rats to be tested upon. A life destined to end in silence, out in space, the mission either succeeding (and you die) or failing (and you die). In a sense, the meaninglessness of their existence gives meaning to their purpose. For as long as they are still alive, they can continue onward towards oblivion. The supposed dregs will continue, and their desire to will forever stand in opposition against the designers of this cruel experiment called life. 

Formally, this feels, intentionally I would imagine, far more contained and locked off than just about everything she's made since Chocolat. Yorick Le Saux's (mostly) digital cinematography does provide a clarity to the images that lends to its ramshackled appearance. The cheapness of it all. Built to simply get one from point A to point B. The bare necessities required. The result of budgetary constraints certainly, but working to only enforce the class of its inhabitants. 

As a work of genre exploration and mining, I find this far more interesting and successful. A lot of Denis' work this century has been genre-play, attempting to find her pocket within pre-establish grooves. So in working within sci-fi and prison movie conventions, I find her attempt at trying to convey class struggle and mixed family dynamics in a semi-palatable manner rather admirable.

Let The Sunshine In (Denis, 2017)

It's strange looking back at reviews around the time this came out, at the people comparing this so much to Rohmer (I did as well), yet this rewatch weirdly reveals a different pocket Denis is playing in. The heavier approach dialogue here, as well as the more wistful romantic narrative does certainly bring to mind the best work of Rohmer but Denis and Godard here don't really engage with much of that beyond the cursory. Their approach to mise-en-scene and camera movement struck me as being much closer to the work of Rivette (especially in his 90s work). A kind of airy quality where the camera gracefully glides around rooms and across people with seeming effortlessness. It's probably her first film since her debut that feels so indebted to him. 

It's telling that for how humorous this film struck/strikes people, it's apparent scathing-ness generally gets less attention. The "fuckboi" mentality is strong in its male characters. Their words, scabrous, but tossed off so carelessly as if they say nothing out of the ordinary. They can be direct or beat around the bush, but they all walk around with seeming carelessness to the people around them, or they feign concern. It's relatively modern in that sense, not that men haven't been sleeping around and using women for centuries, but more in their attitude and demeanor to doing so. 

For the majority of her career as a director, Denis has been pretty consistent in her films showcasing the lives of those in the working class, the under-class, the underground in some instances. It was in White Material that her eye did begin to drift in this regard, perhaps due to budgetary concerns and requiring(?) a lead with a name, Isabelle Huppert, that presenting the upper class in her films. Certainly not without critiquing them of course, but for whatever reason the upper class began to have more interest to her. 

But it's this film that, I think, fully revels in it's upper-class/upper-middle class luxuries. She isn't able to cut around to various revolutionary factions as in the aforementioned White Material or present the film through the eyes of a vengeful mariner as in Bastards. Here, we are only privy to Isabelle's (Juliette Binoche) perspective. We barely see Isabelle at work, painting, but she lives in a nice apartment, attends and/or presents at galleries, wears nice clothes, et. - monetary problems do not appear to even enter into her periphery. To even go outside of her circle of friends (class) is too much for her. In this regard, it's a gentler, more subtle critique at class than the previous two films have done. The violence is purely emotional. A desire to have and be rid of each other, personalities are rendered insufficient, they only need the body of another. 

To this, perhaps Denis' least alienating film - though what do I know, when I saw it in a theater and people started leaving during the credits people thought Binoche's performance was too "wishy-washy" for them - but also maybe her most accessible. It plays within romantic/romantic-comedy conventions, and the sort of narrative beats one generically associates with French cinema and it doesn't to much to undermine them so much as it underlines and highlights certain beats that many might otherwise overlook. It isn't so much an aberration in her filmography as some critics have asserted as much as a detour, a dalliance, into generic territory she had yet to engage with. For me, it's not a truffle, it's a souffle.

Bastards (Denis, 2013)

Denis' noir-riffing thriller remains her bleakest work (from everything I've seen). A bloody and jagged knife that's started to rust. Vincent Lindon is Robert Mitchum, a humble man who gets called back to enact revenge upon those who have destroyed his family. There is no hope and no salvation, only brutality. 

Viewing this in the context of knowing it as Denis' first feature using mainly digital does provide insight into its presentation. It is perhaps Denis' most (intentionally?) ugly film. The digital photography is muddy and dark, though never not precise. It's a grey world and sapped of color and vibrancy. Every shot purposeful and feeling intentional but also thrown off, though this could be said of a majority of her post-2000's work. But it's through this digital lens that she's working with here that makes the whole endeavor come across as a more "gritty", for lack of a better word, genre exploration than some of the earlier ones were. 

The anger of the upper class here is seething in its fury. No one is provided safety from those with the cash, you will be used to satisfy or at least satiate their hunger and then left for dead. It is a world bathed in shadows. And knowing what happens within said shadows is maybe better off not being revealed to us - depravity awaits. 

There's a degree to which it is a male power fantasy to be "the one who comes in and saves the day", as it were. Being called into a dangerous/shady situation and solving it for the family/community around said male. As mentioned above, it plays into noir/thriller archetypes. What is a man to do when his idea of being the hero to whomever cannot be actualized. Denis undermines the entire male bravado here by placing it in perspective of a world dominated wealth. Wealth equals power, and power means righteousness (even righteous revenge) is futile. Settling a score or even getting even is destined to end in more tragedy. Heroes don't save the world here, they don't even live to see the sunrise. They disappear into the darkness never to reemerge from its depths.