Stars at Noon

The situation in Nicaragua is tense: monetary devaluation, the upcoming elections (though they are repeatedly postponed) and the corona pandemic are paralysing daily life. Right there, American Trish is staying in a run-down hotel. She is a travel journalist, but she has no clients and therefore no means to leave the country. To get money, she sells herself to influential men and that is also how she meets the shadowy English businessman Daniel. He could improve her financial position, she hopes. But that turns out very differently.

Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Rhums and High Life, among others) is a director with a signature all her own, evident in all her films. Stars at Noon is reminiscent of erotic thrillers made in the 1980s. But in the narrative style and staging so typical of her, she offers a character study of a cynical woman who manages to hold her own in a foreign country while scheming.