Mummy’s just going into space

LAST year’s feeble Lucy In The Sky starred Natalie Portman as a US astronaut just back from a voyage and struggling to readjust to life on Earth.

Proxima ()))), in cinemas, 12A), a much better film, flips the premise, with Eva Green (below) as a French astronaut, Sarah, preparing for a year-long mission on the International Space Station and trying to juggle this with the demands of motherhood.

‘I don’t get maths,’ wails her daughter Stella (Zelie Boulant-Lemesle) down the phone, even as Sarah floats in a simulated space chamber.

Alice Winocour’s film cleverly offers insights into the challenges faced by many working mums. The added complication is that Sarah is about to set off on an expedition from which she may not return, with Stella all too aware of the perils she faces.

If that sounds contrived, it’s really not. Their situation feels utterly plausible, with Matt Dillon’s portrayal of the mission leader as an unreconstructed sexist the only slightly clunky note. Otherwise, this is a film brimming with modernday relevance, and both Green and young Boulant-Lemesle are terrific. THE VIGIL ())), in cinemas, 16) is a horror film set in Brooklyn using the Orthodox Jewish tradition of the ‘shomer’, a man who watches over the recently dead before their burial, as an effective springboard for the scares. There’s not too much originality to the story beyond that but it’s genuinely creepy, well-acted and tautly written and directed by debutant Keith Thomas. MAKE UP ())), Curzon Home Cinema, 15A) is by Claire Oakley, a maker of short films here writing and directing a feature-length picture for the first time. It’s a quirky psychological not-quitethriller, set in a Cornwall caravan park out of season, which may owe something to Nic Roeg’s 1973 classic Don’t Look Now.

Molly Windsor is excellent as Ruth, a teenager who has arrived to spend time with her boyfriend (Joseph Quinn), only to become fixated by what she thinks are telltale strands of red hair on his clothes.