Takes your breath away
15 ★★★★
Ryan Reynolds did it in a coffin in Buried, Robert Redford pulled it off in a boat in All Is Lost and Tom Hardy did it with style in a car in Locke.
Single-location thrillers often bring the best out of actors. Now Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) adds to that list with a wonderful turn as a woman trapped in a cryogenic pod.
As we spend most of the time with one character in one location and the minor characters featuring as off-screen voices,
Oxygen is not only the perfect film to shoot in lockdown but a great match for Netflix’s underrated foreign language menu. I may well be kicked out of the Critics’ Circle for even thinking this, but this French sci-fi works perfectly well in dubbed English.
Director Alexandre Aja (Crawl) opens with a rat in a maze, an image that could be a flashback, a hallucination or a hint at the film’s final twist.
Then we are right up in Laurent’s grill as she thaws out with no knowledge of where the pod is, why she’s in it, or even what her own name is. Thankfully, an Alexa-style computer is on hand. “System failure. Oxygen level at 35%,” offers the Medical Interface Liaison Operator (MILO to his mates) by way of an introduction.
That means, depending on how much panicked panting this cheery greeting inspires, she has between 45 and 72 minutes to think her way out.
As the clock ticks, we endure frustrating calls to the police, panicked trawls of social media, cryptic flashbacks and cramped battles with robotic arms. But this is all about the performance. Laurent is anguished, furious and determined.
It’s a gripping one-woman show.
Laurent is anguished, furious and determined... a gripping one woman show