Robert Pattinson stars as an astronaut who swears off sex inHigh Life, a kinky and perverse sci-fi adventure by French director Claire Denis.’High Life, which is the acclaimed director’s English language debut, had its U.S. premiere Tuesday evening at the New York Film Festival.

Pattinson walked the carpet in a tight fitting jacket paired with wide-legged shorts, an outfit only he could pull off without looking silly. He actually had three costume changes that day, with jeans in the morning for the press conference, the shorts suit for the red carpet and back to casual wear and a baseball cap for the Q&A following the evening public screening.

InHigh Life,帕丁森（Pattinson）在飞往黑洞的宇宙飞船上扮演死排罪名，进行物理相关的实验。太空飞船看起来像是货物箱和医院之间的十字架，而宇航员是其他年轻罪犯，死刑悬在他们的头上，他们的头部在本质上永远是监狱。同时，他们正在参加 - 有些勉强地参加在由朱丽叶·比诺奇（Juliette Binoche）扮演的性痴迷医生精心策划的复制实验中。

Binoche’s Nurse Ratched-like doctor (her crime, which she says is the only one worthy to be called one, is that she murdered her family) wears a black braid down to her waist and a white unbuttoned nurse’s outfit and seems obsessed with collecting sperm samples to impregnate the women. She tricks Monte (Pattison) into some weird, half-asleep sex play and uses the sperm to impregnate one of the women on the spacecraft, which is how he ends up becoming a space dad. (Binoche herself has a sex scene you have to see to believe, where she writhes around naked on a large steel dildo in a space called a “fuckbox.”)

Earlier in the day at the film’s press conference, Pattinson was asked how he became attached to the film. He said he caught Denis’ 2009 film “White Material,” on TV by chance and tried to set up a meeting to finesse himself into one of her films.

Meanwhile Denis did not have Pattinson on her radar forHigh Life.She envisioned the character of Monte in the film as an “older man, tired of his life, at the end wishing nothing but to die,” Denis said, “Robert brought something unexpected to the part. I was a little bit afraid, to be honest. I’m wasn’t afraid, not of his youth, I was afraid maybe he was too good-looking or too precious… I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I have to be aware of that and not be afraid of that, you know, not to be afraid by his charisma.”

“不要害怕，”帕丁森低声说道。

The actor was asked at the press conference about his choice of eclectic roles, including “The Lost City of Z,” “Cosmopolis,” “Damsel” and now High Life.”

“In general it’s pretty simple. I’ll see a director’s work (I admire) and “basically I just approach people whose work I really love.”

他在丹尼斯（Denis）说：“似乎所有演员都有完全无意识的意识，他们似乎真的居住在身体上。作为一个不完全居住在我身体的人，”他说，“我希望是否发生在其他人身上，也许会发生在我身上。”

I asked Denis on the red carpet how she dreamed up such a kinky script. “I don’t know. I am like that. I am kinky maybe,” she said. “I thought it was the way to do it, that was my plan.”

I asked her what she meant earlier in the day about her reservations about casting Pattinson because she feared he might be too charismatic to play Monte. That’s not what she meant she told me. “I said there was at the moment I was shy, I didn’t say he was too charismatic. I said, I was afraid that I was not going to understand how charismatic he was in a film you know? No, I was not afraid by that, it’s only that I was shy, that’s all. And he is mysterious and shy too you know?”

Of the adorable baby scenes in the film, during the Q&A Pattinson said the baby was the daughter of his best friend, and they cast her after a few other babies didn’t pan out.

“This baby was terrific to work with, so cute, so open to people, so interested in sharing,” said Denis.

“From the first day she was like that,” said Pattinson. “She also took her first steps on set and called me ‘dada dada.’”

The director wasasked why she decided to makeHigh Life用英语讲？

丹尼斯在问答期间说：“在太空中，人们只会说英语或俄语。”

最后一个问题是对72岁的导演，讲述手淫和“ Fuckbox”。

Said Denis, “The fuckbox is more than (a place to) masturbate. They do masturbate alone in their box” but “this box is a way to be alone and it was important that there was such a place.”

帕蒂森微笑着，沿着“是”点了点头。

Pattinson sings over the closing credits of the movie to a ballad called “Willow” by Stuart A Staples of English alternative Rock band Tindersticks.

A24 purchasedHigh Lifewith no release date yet set.