Proxima

The subject is a European Space Agency mission called Proxima, astronauts will travel from the Russian launch site to the space station and stay there living and working for a year. The prime subject of the movie is the single French mom who has an eight year old daughter. Being separated for that long will be difficult for both of them.

This is not a space action movie, in fact it ends with the blast off. It is a character study, surely inspired by the many mothers who have done something similar over the past 35 to 40 years. During the end credits are a montage of several female astronauts and their families, from a variety of countries.

This is a good movie, my wife and I enjoyed it at home on DVD from our public library.

Apparently the writer thinks that only female astronauts are parents. Either that, or male astronauts don't really have relationships with their children. I don't think one would ever see a movie like this where a male astronaut's relationship with his child was the primary focus of the movie. And then, at the end of the movie, she does something really stupid that would very likely end her career and possibly put her colleagues in danger. The parts of the movie that are about preparing to go into space were interesting (though slow), but the human drama parts were annoying.

POSITIVES:

1) All the scenes with Eva Green's character, Sarah, and her daughter, Stella, are emotional and fantastic 2) I respected the film for not "Hollywoodising" its subject matter 3) There is a scene near the end where Sarah and Stella are talking through a glass shield and Stella's face reflects over Sarah's on the other side of the glass and it was such a beautiful shot

NEGATIVES:

1) I wasn't engaged at all by any of the scenes of Sarah's astronaut training 2) Matt Dillon's character was very cliche and underdeveloped 3) There is no score until the final 15 minutes and that made the film quite boring and not cinematic 4) The film doesn't really have any kind of purposeful story, it's a bit pointless 5) Despite going to a 1:20pm screening I genuinely felt my eyes closing at times

Proxima is a very sincere, intimate and devoid of pathos cinema. This is the psychological portrait of a woman devoted to her dream of flying into space. When the main character approaches her goal, she begins to understand how difficult it will be to leave the planet. The picture is more like a documentary than a science fiction story. Great Eva Green and good pictures of the Bajkonur spaceport deserve praise.

I have to say I went in optimistic and left disappointed.