Every so often in “High Life,” the latest from the French director Claire Denis, there’s a shot of outer space. A cosmic whatsit, the story largely takes place in a black-velvet void with pinpricks of light. Earth is far away, long ago, a memory. Not all that much happens in this immensity, though sometimes a colorful gassy emanation floods the screen and something — a wrench, a body — floats into the great nothing. Inside a spaceship, by contrast, there’s plenty of action: bodily fluids, spasms of violence, the rising and setting of Robert Pattinson’s head. It is an amazing head, its pale skin stretched across bone that is as geometrically distinct as a Cubist portrait. Denis, who has a seductive visual style, spends a lot of time focused on Pattinson’s skull in “High Life,” which centers on his desultory character, Monte. He’s one of a small criminal crew of good-looking men and women (Mia Goth, Lars Eidinger and the musician André Benjamin are onboard, too) who years ago agreed to participate in a space mission to avoid the death penalty. Their journey ostensibly has something to do with the earth’s looming environmental catastrophe, but mostly plays out as an excuse for Denis to explore the farther, darker side of her imagination. Denis’s work can be intoxicating, filled with strong, attention-seizing, mind-bending images that resonate powerfully. At times, beauty seems to stand alone, untethered to meaning; at other times, it underlines a tangible idea or generates significance by proxy. Years after seeing her film “Nénette et Boni” (1996), I don’t remember much about the story. But its startling, playfully erotic, intensely palpable reveries remain embedded in my memory: the white bunny nestled between a woman’s feathery high-heel mules, the baker’s wife with a creamy, teasing bosom who leans over a display of luscious pastries. “High Life” has its share of striking images that sometimes fit together like puzzle pieces or just float into nothingness, similarly to that errant wrench. The story starts to take shape shortly after the birth of a girl, whose unexpected arrival disrupts the ship’s already fragile stability. Named Willow (and played in turn by Scarlett Lindsey and Jessie Ross), the baby is the first to survive the experimental interventions of Dibs (Juliette Binoche), the ship’s demented doctor. Wearing a long, heavy rope of braided hair, signaling the crew’s many years in space, Dibs has a criminal past, too, but she also has dominion over the other crew members, whom she medicates to keep docile.<doc-sep>“[Robert] Pattinson is not unaware of how handsome he is,” wrote Roger Ebert when reviewing Twilight in 2008. “I checked [him] out on Google Images and found he almost always glowers at the camera ’neath shadowed brow.” Ebert was kinder to Catherine Hardwicke’s massively successful YA adaptation than many critics were, recognizing both the elemental power in Stephenie Meyers’s contemporary-yet-chaste variation on vampire mythology and the hypnotic thrall of Pattinson’s screen presence (“Twilight will mesmerize its target audience, 16-year-old girls and their grandmothers”), but his review doesn’t contain any thoughts on the actor’s skills or technique. The most that Ebert can muster is that the guy has a pretty face. The narrative of Pattinson’s rebranding from multiplex sex symbol to art-house axiom is by now well-established: Both he and Kristen Stewart have, largely through their own confident and self-possessed artistic decisions, emerged from the Twilight zone as critically acclaimed actors. Their incredible successes at a young age mean they’ve had the career security to follow their whims. While some might wince at Pattinson’s after-the-fact contempt for his star-making role, the choices he’s made since the franchise came to an end are those of an actor less interested in living something down than measuring up to standard: In his best work, Pattinson stands tall. Here’s a look at some of that work. Cosmopolis and Maps to the Stars A case can be made that no North American filmmaker has gotten more consistently brilliant performances out of their leading men over the last 40 years than David Cronenberg. Think of James Woods’s scummy, bewildered charisma in Videodrome or Jeff Goldblum’s simultaneously physical and behavioural mutation in The Fly; Peter Weller’s tranced-out deadpan in Naked Lunch or Ralph Fiennes’s intricate web of neuroses in Spider; Viggo Mortensen’s deceptive small-town normality in A History of Violence and his Oscar-nominated, Russian-accented badass in Eastern Promises (a role requiring the greatest full-frontal fight scene of all time). When Jeremy Irons won Best Actor in 1991 for playing Klaus Von Bulow in Barbet Schroeder’s Reversal of Fortune, his thank-you speech included a shout-out to Cronenberg, who directed him two years earlier in Dead Ringers. “Some of you may understand why” he added semicryptically, perhaps alluding to the fact that his dual role as disturbed twin gynecologists in Cronenberg’s masterpiece was in fact his proudest moment. It’s in this context of thespian excellence that Cronenberg’s casting of Pattinson in the lead of his 2012 adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel Cosmopolis raised eyebrows. The consensus was that the director’s decision was strictly business, attaching an actor with an international box office profile to an independent production to secure financing. One of the biggest skeptics was Pattinson himself, who told Indiewire that he locked himself in a hotel room for a week agonizing over his choice to sign on. “I got to the point where I was going to have to call up and say ‘I’m too scared because I don’t think I’m a good enough actor and I’m a pussy.’ … I didn’t want to have that conversation.” Sign up for the The Ringer Newsletter Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Email (required) By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. Subscribe Whether Pattinson was being authentically humble or had internalized the critical scorn directed at Twilight is impossible to say for sure, but his fine, minimalist performance vindicated Cronenberg’s instincts along with his own skill set. Using a globally famous kid to portray an avatar of above-it-all late capitalism was a good in-joke; Pattison’s millennial billionaire Eric Packer is not a celebrity, but he’s got a limo, an entourage, and the kind of all-access lifestyle that signifies a similar privilege. Between the teeming New York city setting and the sociological satire blended into Eric’s quest for the perfect haircut, DeLillo’s novel has echoes of American Psycho. But in lieu of Christian Bale–style pyrotechnics, Pattinson projects a watchful, contemplative vibe, even in moments of humiliation: How members of Team Edward felt seeing their love object grimace through a rectal exam is one of the great thought experiments of our time. What’s ingenious about Cronenberg’s adaptation of Cosmopolis is how the extended cameos by a troupe of skilled, eccentric art-house-resident actors—Paul Giamatti, Mathieu Amalric, Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche—keep bouncing off Pattinson’s stoicism. He gives the film its spine even when he’s the butt of its jokes (again, the rectal examination scene is hilarious, and so is his hooking up with a spastic, intense Binoche in the backseat). Cosmopolis wasn’t a hit, but it established Pattinson’s eager-and-willing attitude about working with challenging filmmakers. He reunited with Cronenberg in 2014’s grotesque, Hollywood-set ghost story Maps to the Stars, portraying, in a coincidental but still wonderfully ironic reversal of their first collaboration, a limousine driver harboring a set of showbiz ambitions. As in Cosmopolis, Pattinson’s comparatively subtle performance helps to ground the action amid some juicier, showier acting (Julianne Moore won a Best Actress prize at Cannes for playing a fading star who is literally beaten to death with an acting prize), and, for the second film in a row, he aces an explicit, intricately choreographed backseat sex scene—a compulsory item when working the guy who made Crash. The Rover The same year as Maps to the Stars, Pattinson appeared in Australian director David Michôd’s dusty, violent thriller The Rover—a postapocalyptic story with inescapable echoes of the Mad Max franchise. As with his appearances for Cronenberg, Pattinson was added to the largely homegrown cast partially for star power, but even more than in Cosmopolis or Maps, he submerges that persona beneath rotten teeth, a nearly shaved head, and hollow, uncomprehending eyes. His character, Rey, is a slow-witted, impulsive drifter who spends the film searching for his brother, Henry (Scoot McNairy), with the help of Guy Pearce’s lethal loner Eric. Not only does Pattinson hold his own opposite Pearce, he imbues Michôd’s derivatively dystopian fable with some soul, singing along to Keri Hilson (“don’t hate me cause I’m beautiful” he warbles in a tender falsetto) and then again final scene with McNairy that evokes the ending of Of Mice and Men with more arterial spray. Michôd’s stab at an elevated genre piece is erratic, but Pattinson’s emotionally unguarded acting is terrific, suggesting a range that his narrower, more controlled performances in Cronenberg’s films never tested. The Lost City of Z The Ringer went all in on James Gray’s historical epic The Lost City of Z in 2016. I prefer the director in contemporary crime-drama mode, but the scale and ambition of Gray’s period piece, which re-creates the turn-of-the-century quest by English explorer Percy Fawcett to locate an ancient tribe living deep inside the Amazon, is undeniable. For me, The Lost City of Z is hobbled somewhat by Charlie Hunnam, who is meant to embody the searching, yearning spirit of a man driven to lose himself in the jungle but never kicks into the right obsessive gear. Pattinson, though, is superb—and barely recognizable underneath a massive beard—as Fawcett’s aide-de-camp Henry Costin, a military man whose motives have more to do with flouting the English aristocracy than serving his country. The rumor was that Hunnam and Pattinson didn’t get along on set, but Costin’s loyalty, which endures even as the character grows skeletal and skeptical on repeated visits to South America, provides the film with some stings of authentic emotion. At times, Pattinson’s mix of frailty and feeling recalls the great John Hurt. Good Time Josh and Benny Safdie’s neon-streaked New York picaresque is one of the most propulsive American thrillers of the decade, and Pattinson, who emailed the brothers after seeing a still image from their punishing, vicious drug-addiction drama Heaven Knows What asking whether they’d like to work with him, is its humming, sputtering, unstoppable engine. His Connie, a low-level hood who plans to rob a bank in broad daylight with his developmentally disabled brother, Nick (played by Benny Safdie), is less a character than the shambolic embodiment of chaotic evil, ricocheting from one bad idea to the next in a swirl of selfishness and collateral damage.<doc-sep>Master French filmmaker Claire Denis had never before produced a science fiction movie, or a project in English, for that matter, so her first foray into the genre is as cautious as fans of her work might expect. Over its nearly two-hour runtime, High Life offers all the classic trappings of science fiction and genre projects: nonlinear storytelling; a nearly wordless opening act focused on the intimate interactions between a softened criminal (played by Robert Pattinson) and a small baby; a masturbation room, colloquially known as the “f**kbox,” equipped with a giant silver dildo that a sexy space Mengele (Juliette Binoche) rides to volcanic psychotropic orgasm; a mini Garden of Eden; frequent eye gouging; and the inevitability of death, as convicted criminals hurtle toward a black hole under false pretenses. Somehow, Denis’ movie is not so much bleak as it is (very) darkly comedic, especially if you’re ready for it. It's also intensely human, as the uniformly rave reviews it has racked up since debuting at Cannes last year have noted. Denis does not historically love to explain her films, but her giggly interplay with Pattinson during a conversation with SYFY WIRE at the New York offices of the film’s distributor, A24, makes clear that the movie was made with a levity on set, if not in camera. In brief, High Life tells the doomed saga of a space shuttle filled with criminals who were tricked into manning an experimental flight that was said to be trying to harvest energy from black holes. In truth, they were the harvesting experiments, as a Dr. Dibs (Binoche), a fellow criminal and mad fertility doctor, uses their fluids and wombs in flailing attempts to produce children in space. For the most part, she receives cooperation by bribing doomed inmates with drugs, trading pills (we’re guessing they’re space-age opioids) for tidy cups of semen and harvested eggs. Pattinson’s character, Monte, is a more soulful sort — he murdered someone, sure, but he was young and it was over a dog, something people give John Wick a pass on — and has taken a vow of chastity. Frustrated at her ongoing failure and unable to keep a desire for her smoldering monkish holdout under control in the maddening vacuum of their lonely prison ship, Dibs mounts Monte in his sleep, extracting his long-guarded sperm in what Denis very frankly labels a rape scene. If there’s one way to understand High Life, it’s that Denis and Pattinson share more laughs over the production of that scene than anything else — and it's not hard to laugh along with them. Video of High Life Trailer #1 (2019) | Movieclips Trailers Rob, you actively pursued Claire, showing up at her door and asking to work with her. Why did you want to work with her so much? Denis: You don’t have to answer that. [laughs] Pattinson: All her movies feel like they're not just made ... it doesn't feel like a director said, "Oh, I'm a professional film director, I'm making this because I have to make a movie." They all feel like a little part of her. I always find it interesting to find out what it is about a director that makes them feel that. But also, I always just thought the performances she always gets, it's across the board, there aren't really any bad performances in any of her movies. So I was just wanting to work with her as an insurance policy. So Claire, why’d you say yes? Pattinson: I paid her. Denis: It didn’t take long. Meeting him, speaking with him, I understood that the choice was made, you know? There was nothing to think about. This project had been in development for some time, but was there any hesitancy or new visual language you had to learn to make a science fiction movie? Denis: For me, really, no. It was like any film I've made, except the location was in a spaceship, you know? But I never thought, wow, this is a new angle in my life and blah, blah, blah. The only reason I was a little bit afraid was because it's in English, but that's all. At least there’s not a ton of dialogue, that must have helped. Denis: No, I never use too much dialogue, but it's not a question of dialogue or not dialogue, you know? Even if there is no dialogue, to make a film in English means you have to think in English. Also, the crew was German. People keep telling me, "Oh, there is not much dialogue in your films." But what's the difference if the film says a lot? Sometimes, dialogue is just noise — blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it says nothing, you know? The dialogue seems to be now, the quantity is like a recipe. If you want to bake a cake, you have to put in 200 grams of this and that, sugar, etc. It's like voiceover. Do we need a voiceover or no? That is a big question in a film, much more important than dialogue. For me was really important. There’s a fair amount of voiceover here — was that ever a debate? Denis: No, even before I met Rob I knew that there must be a voiceover because I wanted to start with the character alone with the baby. Not that I was checking my watch at all, but the opening with just Rob and the baby, that’s a significant chunk of time. Is it hard to get a baby to act? Did you just let the camera roll? Denis: Do we direct? No, you have to create a mood. Pattinson: It’s so difficult to get a film crew to be quiet. It was the most gentle set. It was a lot of having to keep the baby asleep and everyone, no matter who they were, there was never anyone making a peep, ever. That was really unusual, especially because we had little tiny rooms, when it would have been really loud. Denis: When you say small rooms, these were of course rooms made for cinema. So it was made out of wood and stuff and when we started shooting with little Scarlet, as soon as she slept in your bed, in the bed, I felt that suddenly the set was real. Immediately it became real. She was really sleeping. Credit: A24 It takes some time to earn a baby’s trust. Pattinson: The first couple of days, when I'd take her, she would get really upset with me for taking her away from her parents, but I know her parents really well, so that wasn’t so hard. I would give her back after finishing shooting, but then I realized every single time she got wrenched away, she'd be really upset. So I was like, "OK, I'm just going to stay with her the whole day." Because if she didn't see her parents, it was fine. But it was also a question of keeping her constantly distracted the whole time. Normally, you know, you shoot a scene and then you leave set. But it was really cold in Cologne, where we were shooting, so I would just stay on set, trying to think of things to entertain a baby for hours. I was constantly running through the trees at the end. You had to think of new stuff. It was only about two weeks, and originally you could go just look at some leaves, "Ooh Scarlett, look at this leaf!" After five days she'd be like, "I'm sick of looking at leaves." And I'd be like, “OK, are we shooting yet?” I'd spend like three hours babysitting. One of the most satisfying things you've ever done, when you're trying to shoot a scene but also trying to combine it with getting her to go to sleep, and if she goes to sleep in the shot, it would be glorious. It’s like scoring a perfect goal. Bonding with the baby is good prep work, then. Pattinson: There’s something deeply traumatic, especially when it's not your baby and she's crying in your arms, you will do literally everything to stop her crying.<doc-sep>
Robert Pattinson knows you want to talk about the "sex box." In his creepy, kinky new sci-fi drama "High Life" (in theaters Friday in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide April 19), the actor plays a prisoner aboard a doomed spaceship, where he and his fellow ex-convicts are unwilling participants in a reproduction experiment led by a debauched doctor named Dibs (Juliette Binoche). Every day, the men are expected to masturbate in a metallic chamber known as the "sex box," donating their sperm in hopes of impregnating one of the women on board. Dibs also outfits the room for her own self-pleasure, with rope, fur and a giant metal sex toy. The salacious enclosure became an instant talking point on Twitter when the movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. When Pattinson read writer/director Claire Denis' script for the first time, "I was like, 'Wait a second? What is this?' " he says with a laugh. "I was fascinated. I knew it was going to spark a conversation." In reality, the room constructed on the set "sort of looked like a public toilet with a dildo chair," he adds. "I was like, 'Claire, this is quite a literal interpretation of a sex box.' The art department spent a lot of time in sex shops getting various objects for it." But "High Life" is more than just space erotica. The unsettling thriller centers on the dejected, world-weary Monte (Pattinson) and his infant daughter, Willow, the last two survivors on a spacecraft hurtling toward a black hole. As the story flashes back and forth in time, the mystery unfolds about how Monte's crewmates met their ends, but also how Willow's improbable birth came to pass. Robert Pattinson no longer hates 'Twilight':The actor now says he has 'very warm memories' of it 'High Life':Robert Pattinson is an abstinent astronaut (and sings!) in his new movie Pattinson, 32, was drawn to the story because "it presented itself as a puzzle," he says. "You had to sort of feel your way through it without really knowing what the exact rules of the script were." Denis, a prolific French filmmaker making her English-language debut with "High Life," initially conceived of the project years ago with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Patricia Arquette in mind to star. Although she envisioned an older actor to play Monte, she changed her mind after talking to Pattinson. "I was struck by him," says Denis, who first saw him as vampire Edward Cullen in the "Twilight" movies. "He's probably more intelligent than me ... and has this extraordinary quality of being a great actor, but there's always a sense of mystery beneath." Before they met, "I read the Wikipedia on 'string theory' and tried to (rationalize) some reason why this character would not age because of spacetime," Pattinson says. "She hadn't heard that before and she loves romanticizing these kinds of ideas in physics. So it was my one card I had to play, and I was like, 'Wow, that actually worked.' " Aside from acting, Pattinson took a hands-on approach behind the scenes: He recruited his best friend's infant to play Willow when the twin babies initially cast wouldn't stop crying during rehearsals. He also sings the movie's haunting closing-credits song, "Willow," which he recorded with alt-rock band Tindersticks. Although he has similarly contributed music to the soundtracks of his films "Twilight" and "Damsel," he has no lingering rock-star ambitions. "I used to play gigs all the time and have always said I'd love to again," Pattinson says. "But there's a strange stigma with actors trying to do music, and it is something quite frightening to me. I've learned how to deal with criticism in film, but I’m very vulnerable to it in music. I don’t know whether I’m willing to take the hits – I prefer to have an audience of one or two (friends)." Not that he has any room in his schedule for a second career. He recently finished shooting Netflix's Henry V drama "The King" with Timothee Chalamet, premiering later this year, and will spend the rest of 2019 in production on Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated follow-up to "Dunkirk," expected in theaters July 17, 2020. The actor says he's "sworn to secrecy" about the project, which has been described as a "massive, innovative action blockbuster." "I got locked in a room to read the script – I don't have it myself," he says.