Movie Review: Oxygen (2021)

A science fiction confinement drama, Oxygen (or Oxygène in French) is a tense one-woman race-against-time survival mystery. The plot is constructed from familiar elements, but remains gripping.

A woman (Mélanie Laurent) wakes up in a medical cryogenic unit, tied down and connected to various intravenous tubes. She does not remember who she is or why she is there. The oxygen level is dropping, giving her a limited amount of time to live. The voice of the medical computer MILO (voiced by Mathieu Amalric), responsible for her health and safety, is her only companion, but the computer cannot unlock the unit without an administrator's code.

Through MILO's communication system she is eventually able to call the police, who are of limited help. After MILO provides access to archived records, she is able to identify herself as Dr. Elizabeth Hansen, and regains flashes of memories at a hospital, in a lab with experimental rats, and of her husband, Leo Ferguson. When she tries to phone Leo, an upset woman answers then breaks off communications, leaving Elizabeth alone again and running out of time.

In exploring the intersection of loneliness, disorientation and survival, Oxygen joins films like Buried, Moon, Gravity, Source Code and 127 Hours, where human resiliency traverses dark places on the path to self-awareness. Oxygen peels back its onion layer secrets in well-measured increments, the Christie LeBlanc script cleverly alternating new revelations with the progression of Elizabeth's turbulent mental state. 

And while LeBlanc borrows inspiration freely, she also keeps the Oxygen mix fresh, Elizabeth's discoveries often startling and on some occasions beautifully staged as one woman's plight expands towards a grand yet desperate quest for survival.

Director Alexandre Aja performs miracles by mounting an effective science thriller in one cramped chamber with his leading lady immobile and on her back, other than in a few dreamy flashback scenes. The interaction between Elizabeth and the generally supportive MILO provides most of the dialogue, plenty of frustration, and flashes of impish humour to counteract a few shocks involving rats, mind tricks, and a hyperactive syringe-equipped medical device.

Mélanie Laurent carries the drama in a magnificent performance, sequentially conveying panic, rationality, resourcefulness, shock, resignation, and finally problem-solving under extreme stress. Once she gets her bearings, this scientist will strive to overcome every impossible hurdle, to her last breath and beyond.



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Movie Review: Operation Finale (2018)

A recreation of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann's capture by Mossad agents, Operation Finale squanders a good story and stalls on minutiae.

It's 1960, and the Mossad leadership receive intelligence that Eichmann (Ben Kingsley), a principal architect of the Holocaust, is living with his wife Vera (Greta Scacchi) and son Klaus (Joe Alwyn) in Buenos Aires. Eichmann's identity was exposed when Klaus started dating the German Jew Sylvia Hermann (Haley Lu Richardson), who alerted her father Lothar (Peter Strauss). Israel's Prime Minister Ben-Gurion authorizes Eichmann's capture and transport to Israel to stand trial, recognizing the historic importance of publicly prosecuting a Nazi leader. 

A team of agents including Peter Malkin (Oscar Isaac), interrogator Zvi Aharoni (Michael Aronov) and doctor Hanna Elian (Mélanie Laurent) is dispatched to Argentina. They establish a safe house and conduct surveillance. The agents then abduct Eichmann at night while he is walking back home from his factory job, but extracting him back to Israel will not be straightforward.

An attempt to tap into an Argo-type vibe, Operation Finale stumbles on misdirected focus. Eichmann's globally televised trial is a milestone event in history, so writer Matthew Orton and director Chris Weitz seek nonexistent tension in a battle of wills between the Mossad agents and the captured Eichmann over whether or not he will sign a piece of paper. In an operation in which everything is forged, the coerced signature of a kidnap victim is a simply insufficient central plot device.

With events confined to the safe house for long stretches, other miscalculations abound. After seizing Eichmann, the ten day delay to secure a flight out of Buenos Aires is presented as an unplanned challenge for the Mossad team, and yet is a barely explained piece of operational incompetence. The fate of several characters crucial in the opening act is left hanging. And other than Malkin, the remaining Mossad agents remain essentially undefined.

The performances of Ben Kingsley as Eichmann and Oscar Isaac as Peter Malkin are better than the material, and their scenes together create a crackling duel between a manipulative master of evil and fiery trained assassin suppressing his instincts for revenge. Malkin's family history (he lost his sister and her children to Nazi death squads) provides an undercurrent of sorrow, but is also overplayed.

The just-in-time final act is Hollywoodization at its worst. Despite good source material, Operation Finale boards the wrong flight.



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The Movies Of Mélanie Laurent

All movies starring Mélanie Laurent and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Beginners (2010)

Night Train To Lisbon (2013)

Now You See Me (2013)

Enemy (2013)

Operation Finale (2018)

Oxygen (2021)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Beginners (2010)

A whimsical drama, Beginners explores themes of sadness, loss and finding romance against the odds, all with a light touch.

Cartoonist Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor) is a thirtysomething man coping with the recent death of his 75 year old father Hal (Christopher Plummer). Five years prior, Oliver's mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller) passed away, and immediately afterwards Hal declared that throughout the 40 plus years of marriage he has always been gay, and now wants to express his real sexuality.

In the present, Oliver meets and starts dating French actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent), but despite the ever present companionship of his cute terrier Arthur, he struggles to overcome overwhelming sadness and a tendency to sabotage his relationships. In flashback, he recalls his father's final years as a sick man intent on living a full life and enjoying the company of his much younger gay lover Andy (Goran Višnjić). In other flashbacks, Oliver recalls childhood interactions with his often lonely mother.

Directed and written by Mike Mills and inspired by his own life, Beginners maintains an understated and just slightly playful tone. Best exemplified by Oliver's drowning-in-sorrow cartoon drawings and the dog Arthur occasionally expressing his dog-like thoughts through subtitles, this is a film where voices are low, emotions are expressed calmly, and arguments are characterized by strained silence and quiet tears.

The flashbacks to different times in Oliver's life reveal the structure of his parents' marriage. His scenes as a boy with his mother Georgia barely ever include her husband Hal, as the adult Oliver comes to terms with the cold love that permeated his childhood.

With Christopher Plummer in sparkling form, Hal comes into his own in the flashbacks dedicated to his short but intense life as a proudly gay elderly man, throwing himself into the lifestyle and volunteering for causes despite creeping ill health. Oliver has to reconcile his joy at his father's late-life blossoming with the charade that his mother must have lived through during a long marriage.

The present-day relationship between Oliver and Anna enjoys some moments, with a meet-cute highlight caused by her laryngitis. But gradually Oliver drowns in a sea of sadness and sucks the life out of both the movie and the relationship, as Mills surrenders to a long stretch of bleakness bordering on oppressive.

Beginners has the courage to gently press against the tender scars of familial upheaval, the muted expressions serving as both a perk and a constraint.

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