1
1
Claire Denis in 5 subversive films, from Trouble Every Day to Let the Sunshine In
To mark the release of her latest film, The Fence (2026), Numéro looks back at five major and subversive films by French director Claire Denis, who honed her craft alongside Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders.
By Violaine Schütz,
and Louise Menard.
Published on 13 October 2021. Updated on 1 June 2026.
High Life, a disturbing journey into the depths of space
Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, Juliette Binoche… High Life (2018) first stands out thanks to its stellar cast. This brilliant team serves a stark, inescapable narrative — a group of criminals serving life sentences agree to become the subjects of a mysterious space mission. On screen, Claire Denis crafts a haunting atmosphere through luminous, drifting imagery that is at once unsettling and almost claustrophobic. The film lingers in the viewer’s mind long after it ends, gradually seeming to suffocate its characters. Hypnotic and troubling, High Life moves between science fiction, a new genre for Denis, and psychological drama. True to a body of work focusing on the complexity and insidious violence that shape human relationships, the French filmmaker delivers a film of rare beauty.
High Life (2018) by Claire Denis, available on Prime Video.
Let the Sunshine In, or the thwarted quest for love
With this strong, moving and funny movie, Claire Denis has undoubtedly made one of the most beautiful films about love, and disillusioned love, of the last five years. We follow Isabelle, a divorced painter in her fifties and mother of a little girl, who is desperately looking for love with a capital L. She is played by the great Juliette Binoche, who is one of the director’s favorite actresses. The depth of this voluble comedy starring Xavier Beauvois, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Gérard Depardieu and Philippe Katerine undoubtedly comes from the literary work it draws from, Roland Barthes‘s A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1977). A masterpiece that we never tire of rediscovering.
Let the Sunshine In (2017) by Claire Denis, available on Canal VOD.
Bastards, a dark and passionate tale
Presented in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013, Bastards is the quintessential film noir. While the feature divided the critics, some finding it clumsy and off-putting, this revenge story infused with passion and brutality nevertheless possesses undeniable strengths. Among them are the remarkable on-screen pairing of Vincent Lindon and Chiara Mastroianni, the haunting music score by Tindersticks, the rock band that has long been associated with Claire Denis’s films, and the sublime cinematography of Agnès Godard, a brilliant director of photography and one of Denis’s closest collaborators.
Bastards (2013) by Claire Denis, available on Canal VOD.
Trouble Every Day, a gory metaphor for human relationships
The disturbing Trouble Every Day pushed many spectators towards the exit before the end of its theatrical screenings, 20 years ago. The shadowy Vincent Gallo and Béatrice Dalle play the two magnetic heroes prey to cannibalism. Beyond the bloody and provocative aspect, Trouble Every Day takes on a metaphysical dimension in the way it metaphorically links romantic relationships and cannibalism. Once again, the Tindersticks do a fascinating job in terms of sound, the soundtrack proving to be as haunting as the shots of wanderings in Paris worthy of gothic paintings.
Trouble Every Day (2001) by Claire Denis, available on Canal VOD.
Nenette and Boni, a lively Marseille melodrama
In an interview with Cahiers du cinéma, Claire Denis described her film as “a kind of Marseille melodrama, with stereotypical characters in the tradition of the Santons of Provence.” Inspired by Marcel Pagnol, by Jean Cocteau‘s novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929) and by the Phocaean city, the French filmmaker writes a family drama centered around two lost people. Boni is a shy pizza maker, deeply hurt by his mother’s death. He is taking in his pregnant younger sister, Nenette, who fled from her boarding school. This hard, remarkable feature is led by Tindersticks‘s haunting soundtrack and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s radiant appearance as a baker dressed in candy pink.
Nenette and Boni (1997) by Claire Denis, available on UniversCiné.
The Fence (2026) by Claire Denis, out in theatres now.
