There’s an early urgency in Alexandre Aja‘s challenging film Oxygène that had me desperate to stand up and stretch my arms, to push out and feel the space around me. Here was a young woman seemingly trapped in what looks like a futuristic coffin, laying face up in the confines of a chamber just big enough for her move her arms up to her face. Harrowingly claustrophobic, I wanted nothing more than to have her break out of it and get moving. So much so, I feared that if it was going to be the entire movie–forced to watch her try and cope in such pressing circumstances–I might be able to get through it. And when she learns she’s running out of oxygen, I thought, “Nope, I’m out.”
However, there’s a powerful pull in Aja’s direction that kept me hovering about it, and when I realized that this tension I was feeling was entirely the point, I hung in, and then found myself connected to it, partnered to the woman as she struggled to free herself of what seemed like certain death. There are its flaws, and I have plenty of questions about the narrative concept, but as it stands, for what it intends, it works well.
The woman is Elizabeth Hanson (Mélanie Laurent). She wakes unsure of who she is, where she is, and why she’s stuck in this odd contraption, a box lined by dim light, a few control panels on the sides, and a large circular screen at her face. A mechanical male voice is warning her that oxygen levels are low and dropping. Turns out, the screen is interactive, a kind of touch enabled computer that not only provides information visually, but can talk and respond to her. Through this, she learns her name, and eventually what is happening. And what’s happening is alarming.
The film is entirely about Elizabeth, and while there are cutscenes with other minor characters occasionally pulling us out of the cramped space she’s trapped in, it is all Laurent on screen, carrying us with her as she battles for control of what appears to her imminent end. This is the reason Oxygène manages to hook as well as it does, Laurent convincing and authentic as she layers Hanson with a wide range of emotional resonance, from catastrophic fear to bursts of inspiring intellect. It’s the perfect “what would I do?” movie for those who like asking such questions.
That’s good because Aja doesn’t have a lot to work with obviously, limited to only the single tiny stage on which to present Hanson’s journey. As such, we see mostly what the circular screen sees, that of Hanson’s face, or what Hanson sees, mostly the screen or the walls around her. It’s Aja’s patience with several of these moments that have us lingering on these elements, compressing our tension into tightening coils as we want, like Hanson, to be nothing but out of there. Seemingly echoing our own sense of pressure, Hanson sometimes pounds on her prison in fury, screaming for it to let her out. But it can’t. And for good reason.
That reason is probably easily guessed early on, and thankfully, Aja understands that, letting us and Hanson in on the larger “why’s” about half way in, deciding that the secret doesn’t need to be for as long as the film itself, allowing the last third be about what Hanson can do about what she’s learned. Writer Christie LeBlanc balances this well, and while part of me wanted the reveal of what’s happening to be delayed a little longer, it was wiser to let it out when it was and get to the more important task of finding a solution to the problem.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t questions, and while I really liked the movie, I think its greatest weakness is the second voice, that of M.I.L.O. (Mathieu Amalric), the computer who serves as a kind of tell-all in helping Hanson get to the answers. I was immediately (slightly) disappointed by this narrative device and the extended latitude for which M.I.L.O grants Hanson access to the knowable. I think the fact that Hanson waking in the heavily trope-laden state of amnesia is a weak link in creating the central plot point, feeling it artificially inflated the drama as a transparent shoehorn for wedging the audience into the story. It’s not all that clever, but ultimately, that’s not what the artists behind the film were after, instead wanting to build a two-stage sci-fi escape plan around a character in heightening states of stress. For that, it does as it intends, and behind Aja’s solid direction and Laurent’s gripping performance, makes it a very entertaining, if not distressing film.
This leads me to the final frames, and as a few days have passed and I pondered what I saw, I began to think that the filmmakers might have been smartly pulled off the saddest ending by presenting the happiest. I’ll leave your interpretation to yourself in discovering, but if you do get to this, pay attention to what you see and what you don’t see in that ending and ask yourself if what is presented is real or not.