Joe Alwyn and Margaret Qualley in Stars at Noon (A24)

It finally took until 2022 for director Claire Denis to become the toast of the film festival circuit. She won the best director prize at Berlin this winter for Both Sides of the Blade and the Grand Prix (basically, the second-place honor) in a tie with Lukas Dhont’s Close at Cannes for her wobbly, sometimes mesmerizing, but meandering Stars at Noon.

Perhaps the Cannes jury, headed by actor Vincent Lindon, a frequent collaborator with the filmmaker, was making up for lost time or saw the Grand Prix as the equivalent of a career achievement honor. However, Denis’s latest is not as tight or tense as White Material, with odd-woman-out Isabelle Huppert in an unnamed African country at war, or as unique as the intriguingly weird and wild sci-fi sexcapades of High Life. This is not the gateway movie for Denis newcomers. Seek out the aforementioned titles or Beau Travail instead.

Based on Denis Johnson’s 1986 novel The Stars at Noon and shot in three weeks in Panama at the height of the pandemic, the film updates the book’s Nicaraguan setting, shifting it from the Sandinista revolution of the 1980s to the country’s fraught 2021 presidential election. Even when the onscreen ensemble is masked, you feel the humidity and sweat—the perspiration is palpable. However, the narrative—of a young American woman who holds herself above the political fray but is out of her depth in navigating a country she assumes she knows so well—feels stitched together, sequence by sequence, and doesn’t always flow.

In retaliation for an earlier article Trish Johnson (Margaret Qualley) wrote about the country’s kidnappings and murders, a Subteniente (Nick Romano) has confiscated her press card, passport, and phone, and forced her to exchange dollars for the local currency. Worse, he demands sex from her whenever he wants. She’s stranded and cut off from other helplines, including the nation’s vice minister, because of her association with Daniel DeHaven (Joe Alwyn), a mysterious Englishman who claims to be an oil executive. He is pursued by both the Nicaraguan military and the Costa Rican police.

Even the CIA trails Daniel, as portrayed by Benny Safdie as a Company Man, when the not-so-secret agent encounters the lovers on the run. In a painfully improvised confrontation that stops the movie in its tracks, Safdie and Qualley flounder at dialogue that goes nowhere as the spook attempts to entice Trish to turn Daniel over to the authorities.

This is in line with the direction: Denis emphasizes atmosphere over narrative. Though the movie has enough physical threats and killings to propel a thriller, it’s not quite that; it’s too leisurely paced and fuzzy in its plotting. Since Daniel remains a little too cool as a lover, this hybrid is not quite an erotic thriller as well.

Still the film shares a sexual intensity with Denis’s High Life. Sex forms a key element of its sweat-soaked story line. It’s the modus operandi for Trish, who barters her body for a free meal or a hotel room with air conditioning. Cinematographer Eric Gautier films Trish and Daniel’s sticky couplings with low lighting, their nude bodies entwined like Rodin’s The Kiss. Though pretty to look at, the two actors don’t ignite much heat between them.

With the looks and assurance of a supermodel, Trish is a kindred spirit to Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly: a young woman with moxie and a mysterious past who somehow survives and thrives. She lives in a one-star (if that) divey hotel, and saunters to the Hotel Intercontinental for martinis that will be paid for by others and where she first saddles up next to Daniel at the bar. Far from coy, she makes her demands clear to him: “For a price, I’ll sleep with you.” Oh, and she wants to be paid in dollars. Walking barefoot in her sundress at night, she sticks out like a sore thumb. In his Our-Man-in-Havana white linen suit, Daniel doesn’t blend in either. They’re easy pickings for all sorts of trouble.

With Qualley’s casting, one could argue that this is yet another art-house film with a beautiful actress wallowing in dodgy and grim situations. Nevertheless, she shines tossing off the hard-boiled dialogue. Yet at other moments, her face reflects the tension of a performer trying to propel a certain dramatic result. However, when her character cuts loose, Qualley is at her most relaxed and impulsive.

Qualley is also one of the more physically free actors of the latest crop of rising stars. Her body fills the screen, whether she’s holding her arms akimbo or tossing her hair back. She claims her space. In comparison, co-star Alwyn remains mostly inert, a non-presence who fades into the background. However, Denis draws the strongest and most credible performances from the local cast, from a hotel manager to a man who sells Trish a car so she can flee the country surreptitiously.

Additionally, the film features one of the year’s best musical scores, by the director’s go-to composers Tindersticks. The jazz-tinged, melancholic soundtrack sets a noirish tone and includes the seductive title song, a late-night, slow-dance ballad in the key of Leonard Cohen. It already sounds like a standard.

Stars at Noon is now screening at the New York Film Festival. It opens in theaters on October 14.