Stars at Noon

Stars at Noon (2022) is Claire Denis's romance-and-espionage drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn lead, stranded together in a feverish, unstable present-day Nicaragua.

Trish is stuck — an American journalist whose contacts have dried up, whose papers are suddenly worthless, surrounded by political tension and a country closing in on itself during the pandemic. Then she falls for a guarded English businessman who looks, at first, like her way out. The closer they get, the clearer it becomes that he's tangled in something far more dangerous than she is, and their affair pulls them both into a maze of surveillance, lies and people who want them gone. Benny Safdie and John C. Reilly turn up along the way.

Denis isn't after slick spy mechanics. She makes something sweaty and sensual instead — intimacy in the middle of collapse, with the heat and paranoia you can almost feel. The film took the Grand Prix at Cannes. It rewards patience and mood over plot twists. Stream Stars at Noon (2022) online on iFILM.