Review: Claire Denis’ erotic thriller ‘Stars at Noon’ emits the sweat smell of sexcess

Few filmmakers can evoke, as fully as Claire Denis does, the intoxication and menace of feeling cast adrift in a world where you don’t belong. Think of the French coffee-plantation owner in “White Material,” clinging desperately to the war-torn African country she’s claimed as her own, even as it tries to expel her like a deadly virus. Or think of the solitary man of mystery wandering the globe and trying to stave off his own mortality in “The Intruder,” a title that could easily sum up this filmmaker’s own adventurous, boundary-defying spirit.

I flashed on both those movies in between all the hot sex, cool liquor and lukewarm longueurs of “Stars at Noon,” Denis’ 15th