Stars at Noon

  Claire Denis’s latest post-colonial anatomy of oppression is a contemporary replay of the 1984 Sandanista revolution in Nicaragua. Hence the covid masks, cellphones and assumption of American weakness.   

As the American wouldbe journalist trying to escape, Trish (Margaret Qualley, Andie Macdowell’s daughter) has a curiously Latina aspect in her character. With her fluency in Spanish, her dark hair and striking, undernourished features she could “pass.” But her expose of government kidnappings and killings have frozen her passport. Her pretence to press privilege is false. The American publisher of tourist blather wants nothing to do with her.  She is rootless in a strange land.

To buy airfare home she sells sex — but only for US dollars. She also uses sex to keep two local “friends” to help her. As she says, “one can’t get it up.” That would be the fossil Minister of — wait for it — Vice. The other, a studly selfserving cop — to her tribulation — can. Her last hope — both for escape and sexual satisfaction — is the mysterious British salesman Daniel, who himself turns into a political liability when he meets her in that lions’ den. The backdoor that served the prostitutes in her hotel room has no state equivalent. 

The helpless American’s dependence upon the white-suited Brit is itself a historic echo of damaging colonialism. As in her abbreviation of Patricia, Trish is reduced altogether, unable to draw on American support, disdained by the locals, especially those who suffer for trying to help her, like the driver whose lifeline auto is burned for his effort. The outside world isn’t awed by “America” anymore. 

So for all her modernity the lovely Trish remains exemplar of The Ugly American. She insults the black owner of her motel, her “cesspool.” Though scrambling (so to speak) for the Yankee dollar, Trish lavishes cordobes on the locals whom she endangers with her demands. For all her presumption of agency — both as American and as Modern Woman — her salvation rests with a CIA doofus. 

Denis’s film is an experience. Its scenes of wit, arousal and initiative barely conceal its overwhelming spirit of helplessness. Hence perhaps the title. Stars at noon? As the times are out of joint, it’s that cursed spite that our poor lovable Trish was born to set it right!  

        Check out my piece on Denis's followup film, Both Sides of the Blade.