Movies

The Avocado Movie Club #30: High Life (2018)

Welcome to the Movie Club! Today’s movie is Claire Denis sci-fi drama, High Life!

Weak poster game with this one but this Hungarian poster is pretty abstract

High Life stars Robert Pattinson as Monte, a criminal aboard a space ship heading towards a black hole for research purposes. The ship’s crew is composed entirely of criminals, and they are led by a doctor named Dibs, played by Juliette Binoche, who performs experiments on the prisoners in an attempt to have a healthy baby born in space.

High Life was filmed on a budget of €8 million1 and had its world premiere at TIFF on September 9, 2018, with a staggered release throughout Europe and the US in late 2018 and throughout 2019. It made only $2.8 million in the box office2, but was a hit with critics, earning an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes.3 

Trivia:456 

  • Claire Denis took various members of the cast and crew with her to the European Space Agency’s Astronaut Centre in Cologne to do research and seek consultation for the film.
  • Claire Denis wrote the movie in English because she couldn’t imagine people speaking French in space, only English, Chinese or Russian.
  • The movie was inspired by Stephen Hawking’s writings, which made Claire Denis start thinking about procreation in space. 

What did you think? Share your thoughts below! 

Up Next: Our next movie will be Ridley Scott’s dark fantasy film, Legend! We will meet to discuss it on September 5th at 12PM EST. Check out the trailer and where it’s playing below: 

USA

  • Stream:  Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, YouTube, Spectrum
  • Rent or Buy: Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, YouTube

Canada

  • Stream: Nada!
  • Rent or Buy: Apple TV, Amazon, Cineplex Store

UK

  • Stream: Prime Video, Flex, Rakuten TV, Disney +, Pluto TV
  • Rent or Buy: Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, Rakuten TV
  1. https://web.archive.org/web/20160210092332/http://www.screendaily.com/news/wild-bunch-to-launch-porn-star-rocco-siffredi-doc-at-efm/5099939.article ↩︎
  2. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/High-Life-(2018)#tab=summary ↩︎
  3. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/high_life_2019 ↩︎
  4. https://scienceandfilm.org/articles/3169/claire-denis-science-consultant-talks-about-high-life ↩︎
  5. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/high-life-claire-denis-consulted-a-physicist-movie-1202337/ ↩︎
  6. https://web.archive.org/web/20160630234737/http://www.indiewire.com/2016/03/claire-denis-on-how-philip-seymour-hoffman-inspired-high-life-and-the-heartrending-charisma-of-robert-pattinson-102813/ ↩︎