So I can sort of tell you what Stars at Noon is about — it’s about a young woman, riding the thin boundary of desperation and shamelessness as she struggles to make her way as an American journalist-without-a-job in Nicaragua, and how she hooks up with a British “consultant” who turns out to be connected to a surprisingly large amount of political danger and violence.

But I couldn’t go into much more detail than that, because the film doesn’t. What’s the deal with that English guy? Who knows, not important. The movie isn’t really a political thriller, it’s a portrait of these two people, and the movie is more about the vibes than any specific events.

And the vibes are dissolute, with a protagonist who has clearly left her country to find something, and now sits in Nicaragua having not really found it, drowning her days in way too much rum, and having sex for money. Her character, and the contradictions at the center of it, are really the heart of the movie. She’s cynical and world-weary, but still young and capable of a great deal of naivete. She doesn’t care about anything, but then clearly cares too much about the wrong things. And even as she’s enmeshed in a deadly thriller-type plot, she still gets sloppy drunk and both she and the movie seem maybe more concerned with her flirty, sexy relationship as with the violence that’s chasing them.

But I’m not really doing this all justice. This is the kind of movie where characters are brought to life with small moments and little nuances, and ultimately, trying to tell what it shows will never be satisfactory. Like a lot of Claire Denis movies, this is going to frustrate people who are in it for the plot, but if it’s the characters and the mood that you’re interested in, it’s got layers and layers to peel back. Recommended.