This film is over my head. There must be something that I’m missing.

It’s a Claire Denis film in collaboration with the Icelandic light sculptor Olafur Eliasson (whose adventures in monochrome I greatly enjoy). It stars Juliette Binoche and Robert Pattinson.

It’s central conceit seems to be to deglamorize space. So instead of the gleaming orchestral sequences of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Denis gives us the boxy Winnebago that Jesse and Walter White used as a meth lab, but with rockets attached. There’s a palpable sense of grunge in this space ship. There’s a [pleasure] box whose workings are obscure, but that seems to operate on the same mechanical principles as a drive-through car wash. The crew of our ship are murderers who agreed to take this trip to avoid death sentences.

This movie has the feel of a movie that is going to take swings at big philosophical questions and the first 30 minutes or so feel like maybe it will turn out to be a squicky Adam and Eve story between Robert Pattinson and his daughter, but not so. They overtake in deep space an identical ship filled with dogs. There’s a cannabis plant the size of Little Shop of Horrors’ Mean Mean Mother From Outer Space cannibal plant. Maybe the juxtaposition with a black hole is supposed to lend the film a Freudian frisson? Seems like a stretch. Ms. Denis is throwing ideas at the wall to see which will stick.

Binoche does her damnedest thrashing about as a mad murderous scientist and Pattinson provides his patented blank performance. (Note: I’m a huge fan of understated movie acting, but after The Lighthouse and this movie I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s not so much understated as a deer in the headlights. I mean next to Willem Dafoe and Juliette Binoche who wouldn’t be?)

What does it all add up to? I couldn’t say. A friend who knows much more about movies than I do dubbed Claire Denis “The Queen of Ellipsis Narrative.” That sounds about right. This movie is a philosophical mad lib. A blank screen onto which you can project whatever questions and answers you wish.

And I have to say that seems like a copout to me. If I want to know what I think, I can figure that out without handing over my valuable time and attention to Ms. Denis. I go to movies hoping to understand what questions and answers interest others. If I’m lucky those questions and answers will then give me something to engage with my own questions and answers.

Bottom line: There’s always pleasure in watching Juliette Binoche attack a role even one that doesn’t seem to give her much to work with. Beyond that, there’s not much here.

Streaming on Kanopy.