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STARS AT NOON (2022, USA) – 6/10

The year 2022 was perhaps the best for French veteran Claire Denis. At least as far as awards are concerned, because the mysterious romantic drama “Both Sides of Blade” filmed in France received the Silver Bear in Berlin, while the mysterious thriller filmed in the US “Stars at Noon” was awarded the Jury Grand Prix in Cannes. And as is often the case in the world of film, it seems to me that both awards for Denis are a kind of compensation for previous years, because both of these films, in my opinion, belong to the lower part of the work of the author of classics such as “Beau Travail”, ” Trouble Every Day” or “White Material”.

This is especially true of “Stars at Noon,” a strange combination of thriller, drama, and romance set in Nicaragua. So even though the time of the action is today, as evidenced by all those masked people in fear of COVID, it is more reminiscent of Nicaragua in the eighties when the civil war was raging there. The situation there is completely chaotic, which is further accentuated by the pandemic, and for some reason a young American Trish (Margaret Qualley) found herself there, posing as a journalist. However, who she is working for and what she is doing there is completely unclear, because in a short call via Skype, the editor of the magazine expressly claims that he does not want to deal with her and ends the call.

You can’t go from country to country because of the political situation and because of the epidemic, Trish is penniless, so she fills the budget with prostitution and sex for money, but also for services from government officials. And the atmosphere is quite anxious, confusing, almost nothing is clear to us, but Trish seems to be managing quite solidly in this chaos. When she meets a mysterious young Englishman Daniel (Joe Alwyn) at the hotel who claims to work for an oil company, she will find in him a ticket to get out of Nicaragua. Although at first their relationship will be for money, it will develop into a romance, and both will try in every way to escape from a country that is sinking into ever-increasing chaos.

Of course, it will turn out that Daniel is not what he first appeared to be, but that is not so important to Trish anymore. I found this erotically charged thriller – a mystery drama quite chaotic, confusing, just like the situation in the country where the action takes place. So even though Qualley is quite solid in the role of a wayward young journalist who is stuck in a foreign country, especially in the first third of the film when we mostly follow her desperate wandering around the city and trying to get money for a one-way ticket, something was missing for me in this film . And that first third of this too long film (135 minutes) is still the best part, because then it seems that the story might be leading somewhere. However, I miss some slightly better socio-political context of the situation, and the whole story and the characters after a while become tiring and tiring, even irritating.

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