Proxima, Alice Winocour’s 2019 drama is very much earth bound. Despite the poster featuring star Eva Green in a full flight suit, the movie never goes into space and spends practically all of its 107 minute runtime on Earth.
Now I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s just worth mentioning right off the bat.
Guidance Is Internal
Proxima tells the story of Eva Green’s Sarah as she prepares for a year long mission to the International Space Station and how she has to balance her professional career and her dreams of being an astronaut, while also being a single mother.
Proxima is a space movie that we don’t regularly get on our shores. First off all, the film is very European in language. As part of the European Space Agency, Sarah, a Frenchwoman, regularly interacts with other her counterparts from other countries. In fact, her ex husband, played by Lars Eidinger, is German. The characters jump between languages so naturally that, reading the subtitles, it is easy to miss the very European nature of this film. As Sarah and her team move on to Russia’s Star City to make final preparations, she interacts with Russian cosmonauts, and even some Japanese members of the ISS.
Ignition Sequence Start
Ostensibly, Proxima is film about a woman trying to make her way in a man’s world. And parts of it play out exactly like that. Sarah is constantly being pressured, and pushed, and getting flack from the mission lead Mike. I can’t quite say if it’s intentional, but Mike, the hard nosed, über-focused American as played by Matt Dillon, can easily come off as the villain of the piece. Except he doesn’t really.
At every turn, Sarah seems to prove Mike right in his assessement. He accuses her of being distracted when she stays up late to speak to her daughter; which then affects her performance the next day. He accuses her of not taking the mission seriously, only for Sarah to insist on bringing her daughter Stella to mission safety briefings. Stella, being a bored eight year old in an adult world, disappears into the night, causing Sarah to bolt from the meeting in order to look for her daughter. At each turn the movie, whether intentional or not, insists on putting the audience in Mike’s shoes by constantly proving him right that Sarah may not be in the right headspace for the mission.
It really put me in a weird headspace too. Not knowing whether or not to root for our hero the movie repeatedly makes her make the wrong decisions. At one point in the third act, Sarah, who is in quarantine ahead of her space flight, breaks out the night before her launch to take her daughter on an earlier promised trip to the site of the launch. Sarah makes it back in time, scrubs her whole body down in disinfecting soap, and joins up with the rest of her crew. Okay, sure, she’s clean, BUT STILL!
All Engines Running
Here’s the thing about Proxima. Nothing really happens in the movie. Proxima is the perfect example of a “character driven” film. Proxima doesn’t need the unnecessary drama of a love triangle, or an exploding space shuttle, or a toxic mission leader. In Sarah, the movie has all of that, and more.
Throughout these 107 minutes I was completely on board with the emotions and pressures the character was feeling. Sure she isn’t the most sympathetic character, but then again, it makes her look and sound like the rest of us? Who is your biggest villain if not yourself?
If I was watching this at home, Proxima is the the kind of movie that have found me easily distracted by my beeping phone, or my tablet, or my cats. But in a darkened cinema hall, in that room full of other moviegoers, I was completely engaged in the story. I was cursing Sarah under my breath. I was aghast at the things she was doing. I held my breath as she, along with her crew, strapped themselves on to a giant rocket, and finally, broke the surly bonds of Earth.
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