Proxima a film review: Kitchen sink science fiction.
What I liked about Proxima is the way it stripped away the space travel science film to a smaller size. It is not that the film is small in ambition, the themes are big; motherhood, separation and a voyage to space. Out of these grand themes an intimate film emerges. The film follows a French woman astronaut Sarah (Eva Green) selected to go to space on a mission launching from Space City in Kazakstan. Going to space is her job and travelling to space is the high point of her career. When she travels it is to the International Space Station not to New York, and she will stay there for one year. What she leaves behind is her young child. This forms the emotional centre of the film, the long goodbye between mother and daughter Stella (Zelie Boulant). With lesser actors cast Proixma could have been somewhat boring, a worthy film shot in a documentary style showing how astronauts are trained for a mission. What we get instead is a science fiction film that defies the clichés of the genre when it comes to space travel. Like Tarkovsky’s film Solaris, Proxima is not in any rush to go to space. Like Solaris, Proxima is more concerned with emotion than technology. Though we do get to see technology as Sarah trains for the mission. The emotion of the film is generated from the mother and child separating. Sarah is amicably separated from her partner and father of her child Lars. Does she harbour a fear that her absence will allow Lars to build a stronger bond with the child?
Mother and child is one part of Proxima the other is opened up by the arrival of Mike (Matt Dillon) the type of astronaut who seems at first to come from the Top Gun school of astronauts. The jousting between Sarah and Mike provide a small amount of electricity in the film. Would she follow convention and hook up with him? Will he undermine her confidence with his cock sure super confident outer image? Don’t expect any soap style plot developments it’s not that type of film. It is instead a character study of Sarah in a profession we’re women are not ofter present, in a science fiction film that respects the science of going to space but does not adhere to the conventions of the genre.
