Premise: An American journalist-ish is stranded in Nicaragua, before she meets and falls for an Englishman who could maybe help her get home...or make her problems worse.
I've been on the Margaret Qualley bandwagon since The Leftovers. She was also great in Maid and Fosse/Verdon more recently. She's a standout in The Nice Guys and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and has hit the indie scene with force. Stars at Noon is from that latter category.
I like Stars at Noon as an exploration of this part of Central America. I've heard about how rough Nicaragua can be, and it's interesting to see a depiction of it, even if it was actually filmed in the relatively safer Panama. I'm intrigued by stories of people who just get stuck somewhere. It seems so foreign to me. Qualley's character loses her journalism job. Her money is exchanged in Nicaraguan dollars that she can't exchange back. She's stuck and hooking to get by.
While the world of the movie is intriguing, I never got that hooked by the story. Qualley and Joe Alwyn aren't a smoldering screen pair. There's a lot of sex and nakedness, sure - it's rare that a movie has so much nudity that I get bored by it - but their attraction wasn't something that sustained me when the film otherwise turned dull. The film has some good ideas for locations, situations, and casting yet didn't have a story I cared enough about. The 90-minute Sundance version of this would've done a lot more for me, I feel.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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