This is the great French director Claire Denis’s first English-language film, starring the always impressive Juliette Binoche, along with Robert Pattinson (of Twilight fame), as two members of space journey crew heading to the edge of our solar system. (All of the action takes place on a spaceship.) Pattinson’s character and his baby daughter are the only ones alive when we join the story somewhere in space and flashbacks fill in the rest of the story: a group of death row convicts (or inmates serving life sentences) are provided with a one-way journey into outer space as part of an experiment about reproduction. Binoche plays the crew’s doctor and the one who is running the experiment. I can’t say I understood what the hell was going for a good chunk of the film’s almost two hours, but I’m not really sure the audience is expected to. This is more a story about community, love, sex, jealously, etc., than a sci-fi tale. If you think you figure it all out, please let me know. “A” for effort.
