Pattinson continues his trajectory further into bizarre/challenging indie territory and he's good at it but some of the material he chooses is somewhat half baked, this proceeded by Damsel and Good Time the previous to years are equally ill conceived. He's not bad, in fact he's very good, nuanced and compelling and present but the scripts are small budget fringe productions for a reason, the synopses function better than the finished product. Juliette Binoche as the ship's (evil?) doctor is absolutely captivating, as she always is, but it just makes you wish she had a script to actually do something with. The rest of the cast are given so little to do their inclusion is a distraction, although it is always a pleasure to André Benjamin he is clearly wasted here.
Visually the film has a lowfi scruffyness that work well with some deliberate expectations about "space" that are subverted in an interesting way. But ultimately that doesn't particularly matter because the script is so convoluted, under developed, and concerned with it's own false profundity that it's actually a boring incoherent trudge. The story has so many disparate and fractured ideas going on- fertility, criminality, imprisonment, parenthood, the power/perversity of sexuality, isolation, bodily fluids etc.- none of them are ever developed or explored or even particularly acknowledged in a way that makes any kind of narrative or emotional sense. There are some striking moments and scenes but for all it's ambition the film carries virtually no dramatic weight and holds very little attention because of it's lack of focus, context, and clarity.
Similar to the significantly more frustrating Under The Skin the creatives behind High Life ask the audience to do more of the storytelling work than they should. Too much is left to the pretentious and lazy directive of "individual interpretation" when what the script really needed was a good revision.
Don't See It.
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