High Life is a 2018 Sci-Fi Horror film directed and co-written by Claire Denis in her English-language film debut. It stars Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, "André 3000" Benjamin, Mia Goth and Ewan Mitchell. Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival on 2018, was released in France on 2018 and released in the U.S. in 2019 by distributor A24.
Monte (Pattinson) and his baby daughter Willow are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to deep space. The crew – death-row inmates led by Dibs (Binoche), a doctor with sinister motives – has vanished. As the mystery of what happened onboard the ship is unraveled, father and daughter must rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.
Not to be confused with the British television sitcom The High Life.
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High Life contains examples of:
- Anachronic Order: As usual with Claire Denis's works, the structure of this film is nonlinear; it begins with Monte throwing dead bodies away from the ship and the flashbacks show what led to Monte being alone with his daughter and why the prisoners are in the space mission to began with.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Monte and Willow's possible fate after entering the black hole at the end.
- Black Dude Dies First: Elektra, the only black woman on board, is one of the first to die. Tcherny lampshades this, saying that even in space black people are the first to die, though he's one of the last to go.
- Buried Alive: It is heavily implied that Tchemy commits suicide this way in the garden.
- Butt-Monkey: Chandra. Ostensibly the ship's captain, he has little if any actual authority, has all of his romantic advances turned down by Dibs, has leukemia, is crippled by a stroke, and has his last request for a blow job turned down shortly before Dibs euthanizes him.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Dibs tells the other crew that they're all thugs and losers, "but my crime was worthy of the name."
- Celibate Hero: Monte was given a nickname "Monk" for not donating his semen to Dibs.
- Child by Rape: Willow. Dibs rapes Monte while he was sedated and use that semen to inseminate Boyse.
- Daddy's Girl: A key element of the narrative is Monte’s relationship with Willow.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Monte got into prison with a death sentence because he killed his friend over a dog a long time ago.
- Despair Event Horizon: Boyse, who's been very vocally against having a child, is left listless and despondent after Dibs forcibly impregnates her. This prompts Boyse to kill Nansen, steal a shuttle, and go on the joyride that leads to her death.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Subverted. Dibs' rape of Monte is portrayed mechanically and as an abuse of her power, immediately followed by her insemination of Boyse.
- Dwindling Party: A Foregone Conclusion given the film's opening, where only Monte and Willow are left. Chandra has a stroke and is put out of his misery by Dibs. Elektra dies from Dibs's fertility experiment, and then Ettore is killed by Mink after he attacks her amidst his attempted rape of Boyse. Boyse kills Nansen and uses her ship for a suicidal joyride. Mink is killed by Monte after she tries to kill Dibs, but Dibs commits suicide anyway, and Tcherny follows suit.
- Fan Disservice:
- After Boyse gave birth to Willow, her topless body is cover with her own breast milk with a fatigued face.
- Dibs has a nude scene, which gives the audience a good look at the scars on her stomach.
- Ettore also strips off, but it's only so he can rape Boyse, and he's soon killed for attempting it.
- Fragile Speedster: Mink shivs and kills Ettore with a hidden knife and later seriously wounds Dibs with multiple blows from a shovel, but is quickly disarmed and killed by Monte with a single blow.
- Gainax Ending: Willow proposes a way for her and Monte to save themselves from the black hole, but the abstract yellow light heavily implies they will instead allow themselves to enter it. Considering they are not being torn apart by it the way Boyse was, it's up to the audience to decide their fates.
- Genre-Busting: High Life fuses a hard sci fi space epic with a prison film, is structured around a father and daughter's relationship, and even contains vaguely supernatural elements.
- Horny Scientist: Dr. Dibs. Particularly evident in a five-minute scene where she rides "the box," a giant mechanical dildo.
- Hope Spot: Monte and Willow's ship manages to come across a vessel similar to theirs in the film's third act whose crew might be able to rescue them. It's filled with starving cannibal dogs.
- Informed Attribute: Chandra is the ship's captain but Dr. Dibs appears to have the most real authority on board, dispensing drugs and administering the sedatives that keep the crew respectively happy and in line.
- Mandatory Motherhood: As a requirement for taking part in the black hole expedition, all of the male crew members must regularly donate their sperm and all of the female crew members are eligible for insemination and pregnancy. Mink, Nansen and Elektra aren't particularly keen to become mothers, but Boyse adamantly does not want children. Her forcible impregnation by Dibs using Monte's sperm pushes her off the deep end.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: During Dibs' visit to the "Fuck Box," the mounted sex toy briefly turns into a fur-covered creature. It's never clarified if this is a hallucination, her imagination, or some other phenomenon. Neither are we given any indication if the final scene is Monte's dying hallucination or some new plane of existence.
- Medical Rape and Impregnate: Dr. Dibs does a partially Gender Flipped version of this, raping Monte to collect his semen and impregnate Boyse.
- Mercy Kill: Dibs euthanizes Captain Chandra, who has been incapacitated by a stroke.
- Noodle Incident: Besides Monte and Dibs we never directly learn why the rest of the ship's crew members were given life or death row sentences.
- Offing the Offspring: Dibs killed her own children before the events of the film.
- Older Than He Looks: While Monte visibly ages in the course of the movie, the effects of relativity slow his rate of aging far beyond that of any Earth human. Towards the end of the movie, we learn that 7,650 days (roughly 18 years) have passed since launch per the ship's local calendar, but from Earth's perspective it's been a whopping 76,861 days—that's 210 years.
- Rape as Drama: Ettore tries to rape Boyse but later killed by her cellmate Mink.
- Dibs rapes Monte so she can impregnate Boyse with his sperm.
- Scenery Porn: Well it is outer space after all but the black hole itself is truly a sight to behold.
- The Sociopath: Ettore is smug, charming, viciously beats Mink and tries to rape Boyse.
- Sole Survivor: Monte and Willow are the last to survive on the ship.
- Space Isolation Horror: The dangerous events of the film occur as the spaceship is hurtling toward a black hole.
- Your Head Asplode: This happens to Boyse under the black hole's immeasurable gravity.
