| A24 | Release Date: October 14, 2022 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
18
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
RogerEbert.comOct 14, 2022
The movie adaptation is typically described in articles and on streaming platforms as an "erotic thriller" or simply "a thriller." But as is so often the case with Denis' films, that's a misleading way to characterize, or even think about, what's actually onscreen, which is more of a vibe than a story, and all the more fascinating because of that choice.
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Oct 11, 2022
Billed misleadingly as a “romantic thriller,” the film is neither romantic nor especially thrilling. The characters are enigmatic to the point of superficiality, the relationships largely transactional, and the action toggles between languid and frazzled over two-and-a-quarter-hours. But with some reflective distance, away from the snap judgment of festivals, Stars at Noon proves a pretty interesting film, if a sometimes confusing one.
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IndieWireMay 26, 2022
Denis, Andrew Litvack, and Léa Mysius’ dialogue is only strengthened by its occasional awkwardness, as it subsumes Trish and Daniel into the same disordered humidity that swamps the film around them. The frequent sex scenes become a dialogue of their own — the lovers feeling each other out in search of something they can actually trust.
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May 26, 2022
When chewing through some oddly phrased text, Qualley’s non-verbal tics offer twice the information with half the winces, making “Stars at Noon” sometimes feel like two films in one. There’s the paranoid thriller and the dreamlike dirge; a steamy drama and its feminist reappraisal; the work of a master with the promise of new kinks to iron out and maybe greater heights to which to soar.
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May 26, 2022
Partly because the characters look so healthily pretty, and partly because the mood is so woozy, The Stars at Noon feels more like a stylish pastiche of a Graham Greene novel than the story of real people battling their way out of a difficult, potentially deadly situation. It's beautifully made, but to enjoy it you have to relax, and let it wash over you.
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The Film StageMay 27, 2022
Her latest work is not one that feels fully achieved and realized, suggesting an absolutely confident mastery of her primary source material, but it’s still deeply watchable, laden with sex and intimacy in a way that doesn’t apologize for itself, and provides an alternate gloss on her key themes of power, bodies, and postcolonial afterlives.
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Oct 14, 2022
It isn’t one of her better movies, but like even her lesser achievements, it warrants more than easy dismissals. It’s a fascinating confluence of talent and tedium; it’s also a story in which tedium — the day-after-day frustration of a stalled, thwarted existence — may well be the point.
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May 26, 2022
The result – something like a female-fronted version of Antonioni’s The Passenger - isn’t likely to entirely satisfy anyone in either the arthouse or mainstream camps. But if taken as an oblique tropical reverie, the film definitely has pleasures to offer – not least an oddball but often riveting lead performance by Margaret Qualley.
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Oct 13, 2022
The rainswept city streets overflowing with graffiti and half-torn leaflets are poignant tableaux of melancholy, the jazz-infused soundtrack by Denis’ house band, Tindersticks, unifying each moment. But as evocative and intoxicating as these elements are, they never quite fit into a cohesive whole, as Trish and Daniel tryst their way to the Costa Rican border.
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Oct 28, 2022
Ultimately, Stars At Noon provides an interesting look into an important time in history for Nicaragua from the perspective of a French director who has no direct involvement with the reality she is representing. Unfortunately, the conventionally attractive hetero-normative romance between the leads, and the espionage shenanigans they get up to, are wildly uninteresting compared to the gravitas of everything that is going on in the background.
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The PlaylistMay 26, 2022
When you’re this good, the weakest entry in your filmography can still be largely inoffensive, far from fiasco territory. Even so, there’s only one person doing it like Claire Denis, and now we must wait even longer to be taken once more to the heights of insight, emotion, and style only she can reach.
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Screen RantOct 14, 2022
Hiding within Stars at Noon is a lean erotic thriller, one where the lack of chemistry between Alwyn and Qualley can be overlooked both because of Denis' directing and the standalone performances of its cast. Unfortunately, the film gets bogged down by pacing issues, hoping to coast on the chemistry of Qualley and Alwyn, but runs out of gas long before danger starts to creep in just past the hour mark.
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Oct 11, 2022
Stars at Noon has some interesting ideas, and a general fatalistic malaise creates a perversely appealing Le Carré-esque mood. But it’s so vague — perhaps because Denis doesn’t understand Central America as much as she does West Africa — that its impact melts in the heat of its near equatorial setting.
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