HighLife-LeFilm has added the French press kit to their website which contains an interview with Rob.  Below is the very rough Google translation

Tell us the story of High Life.
This is the story of a group of prisoners sentenced to death. they have the opportunity to go on a space mission to explore a black hole, in order to shorten their sentence. The mission ends up going wrong and
a tragedy ensues …

What is your character’s place in the story?
I think all the characters are in the same boat except Dr. Dibs or Captain Chandra. We do not have roles predefined in the ship. We have more or less a hierarchy established but we are all prisoners sentenced to death:
prisoners on land and prisoners in the ship. That’s it, there is not really any specific role but a hierarchy and I guess Monte is higher in the hierarchy than other characters. 

What did you like about the project?
I’ve always loved Claire’s movies and stories like that, I could not even imagine what the scenario would look like. The film is very elliptical and unusual, I really wanted to work with Claire, the script is crazy and very daring. It’s a science-fiction movie but I find that most of the themes in the story do not have relationship with conventional science fiction. It’s very daring and a little dangerous.

How did you prepare for the role?
The scenario has changed a lot and I have a lot thoughtful, but like most movies, everything changes overnight. In function casting, interpretation of the actors, the scenario is rewritten regularly.  We visited the European Space Agency and discussed with astrophysicists. The preparation was difficult because we had to we prepare to play astronauts, without as much as being astronauts. We are prisoners, we do not know anything about spaceships. We are just the object an experience. So I would say that I prepared myself quickly, simply. Claire works in a way very unusual. She finds sources of inspiration original and dramatic … and she try to encourage us to do the same. So I was trying to find some inspiration from a sculpture for example, rather than
of something more classic. 

We know almost nothing of the past prisoners. How much is this
important?
I never found that important. Already because in general people are only inventing their life. I think the past, for an actor at least, it’s boring. Think about what could have take place before to explain what’s going on today, sometimes it’s interesting, but sometimes I like the idea of ​​staying succinct, evasive. 

What differentiates Monte other crew members?
From what I perceive, the characters do not – are not conventional human beings they become very animal and primary. After years and years locked up in prison, where even in prison there are rules to follow, there none of the characters knows where he is going and what he does there. All are just allowed to wear and the very conception of time disappears because after years in space, hundreds years have passed on earth, so what is it good continue to live? For whom, for what? It is a real existential problem for them.

What does it do, acting with a baby?
Each new element of the film falls to us on it, and we have to try to get by
with. I think the best example is the having to act with a baby, because
can not predict what she will do, and she is very important in the movie. You really have to do the good scenes with her and it’s very interesting to try to play emotion scenes with a baby because she has no idea what she is past. It’s funny.

When is the film running?
I think it’s happening in a reality alternative. Looks like some elements come from the 50s, others from the 80s … it’s a bit like the past of the characters, we could really venture into their stories and I do not know where that would lead us or what we would find. I think we would end up in total chaos.  And I think it’s a little bit there located. Finally, we just have no idea.

What does the film tell us about the current state and the future of humanity as it is today?
The film is so specific and personal that it does not feel like he’s trying to describe a theme, or to make the defense or the trial of humanity. I think it’s just a story amazing and complex that comes out of the imagination
Claire. It’s interesting because she has a unusual way of seeing things. This is why I wanted to do it from the beginning … try to get in
in her world. I do not think history is very objective. It’s very subjective, it comes from her. I think with that we’re all going to end up become abnormal.

The casting is very international. Tell us how it happened for you 
You might think it’s hard for us to discuss, but we find ourselves in a
Universe so particular… with the filming, the screenplay… There’s some kind of weird link that is created between all members of the casting.  The specificity of the situation.  And it’s not like there’s a person stranger in the middle… there we are all foreign.

About Juliette Binoche?
She’s great, she always has been. I was really happy to hear that she participated. Her role is very difficult. He becomes quickly the archetype of the evil psychopath but it’s funny because Juliet, although she plays the wicked on many aspects, still manages to bring multiple facets to her performance, and it’s hard to to succeed in doing that. It was a real pleasure to act with her.

What does it mean to work with Claire Denis, both as a screenwriter and director?
She is incredible! Much more funny than what I would have thought. She is unique. Very passionate, very free. She does not judge us on our decisions. We can do the most things weird, she will follow us, it’s fun. And she is not afraid that people will judge her either. I can not say as much for myself … Claire Denis leaves the field free to a lot of improvisation on the shooting.

Is it something which you are used to?
I like to use dialogues as a skeleton of origin to refer to, because many elements of the films are well put in place upstream. But I really like being able to let me go to the interpretation and do some something very different from one take to another, using the same dialogue. It’s hard to improvise with a language because we do not always understand what it’s all about … well, it’s easy, but sometimes it does not make sense!

What was the most memorable moment and / or complicated on the filming?
I think what will remain the most striking was when Scarlett, who plays Willow as a baby, and who is the daughter of one of my best friends, to take his first steps with me on the set, and called me Dad. Pretty incredible. And her real father was watching the scene … I think I will not forget this moment. It’s an incredibly unique and special film so I think the whole thing was a real challenge but it was also very fun

Extracts from Claire Denis interview featuring comments about Rob:

How was the High Life project born?
A long time ago an English producer asked me if I wanted participate in a collection of films whose generic title would be “Women fatal.” Sincerely on the spot, it did not say anything to me and then I thought about it and I said yes. It took a long time to raise the funds. Production with French, Germans, Poles and, finally, Americans took 6 years. In the meantime, I went England and the United States to meet actors. The ideal to my eyes for the main role of Monte was Philip Seymour Hoffman. And then he died brutally. The Scottish casting director told me says, “There is another actor that you absolutely must meet, it’s Robert Pattinson. ” At first, I thought he was too young, that it would not go. In addition, his beauty intimidated me. In Los Angeles I met Patricia Arquette for the main female role, that of Dibs, the doctor. At every meeting or almost, Robert Pattinson pointed, discreet and charming. From the corner of my eye, little by little, he intrigued me. Obviously, I already knew him. Like millions of spectators, I had seen the 5 episodes of Twilight. But in this series of films, what fascinated me was the couple he was forming with Kristen Stewart. There is a scene that I remember particularly where Kristen Stewart says to Robert Pattinson that she accepts that he is a vampire. He answers her “No, I can not, I do not want to hurt you.”

I also saw him in the two films he shot with David Cronenberg, Cosmopolis in 2012 and Maps to the Stars in 2014. One evening in
the hotel I realized that it was stupid to search madly a double of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Robert then imposed himself as an obviousness. With Jean-Pol Fargeau, the co-scenarist of the film, we had written a first version in French. We had it translated in English for Robert.
Then it was immediately simple. Robert came to Paris, we dined,
we were talking, it was happy. He often told me that he misunderstood the scenario, that he was not entirely sure of what I wanted to leave. I felt that he was scared as for the chastity of his character. But he was always very present, a active partner, always available. He said yes, and it was like saying yes to the power thousand. What was confirmed during the shooting in Cologne, Germany. He could have demanded go back every weekend to London. But no, he stayed there all the time. He had dinner with the team, not because he was bored but because he wanted to be inside, thoroughly. At the Aerospace Center Cologne, with all the other actors (Juliette, Andre, Mia, Agata, Lars, Claire, Ewan and Gloria), he followed the training course of astronauts including in this machine that for a few moments recreates weightlessness

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And the baby?

Very important, the baby! Her name is Scarlett. She is English. She is the daughter of Sam, Robert Pattinson’s best friend, his friend from childhood, his school friend. We were very close to the beginning of the shoot and we could not find the baby. So Robert tells me “why are we breaks the head to make castings to lots of babies while I know one that will be great. We all fell on our knees in front of Miss Scarlett, so chubby, so charming. It’s not very difficult to turn with a baby. We respect his meal times, his naps, his fits of tears. We were in tune with these rhythms and we turned, more or less silent and invisible thanks to the great delicacy and discretion of the chief operator Yorick Le Saux. And when we see her learning to walk in a corridor of the spaceship, that’s upsetting because that day, Scarlett has really taken its first steps in our spaceship. In the evening she knew how to walk and shouted for joy. This is one of my favorite scenes. This is where we see on the face of Robert Pattinson that his beauty does not take the top on his humanity. Or rather that his goodness is beautiful to see. Robert who had never approached a diaper of his life or fed a baby with a spoon, for miss Scarlett, he got down to it, and how!

Sexuality is very present in High Life but often funereal?

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