Oxygène (2021)

directed by Alexandre Aja

France

100 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I had quite a few reservations before watching this, but I chose to anyway based off of the strong positive response it seems to be getting. None of my reservations were bigger than the fact that Alexandre Aja has just never directed a movie I've liked. Crawl was pretty good, Horns had its moments, but I've always thought of him as a director who largely relies on cheap thrills even if they're in an expensive movie. So maybe it's because he didn't write Oxygène, or maybe I just have to suck it up and say he finally got one right, but I gotta admit: I really, really liked this Alexandre Aja film.

It feels weird to say that this premise is overused, because there's not a ton of movies that take place entirely while the character is confined to a box not much bigger than their body, but the fact that there's more than one movie like that already feels like an oversaturation. There's only so many places you can go with an idea like that. But Oxygène hits it out of the park and wrings the concept for all it's worth, but more importantly it doesn't limit itself to that concept and the constraints it comes with. It never feels like this is a gimmick, or worse, that it's done to hide an insufficiency in the budget, or that it's molded around said insufficient budget. I loved this because the world it takes place in feels expansive despite the physical confinement of the main character. It introduces us to concepts, events, technology, and timelines that are foreign and obviously the territory of science fiction, but none of it feels out-of-place. I don't want to sound too enthusiastic about this because it's still not the absolute best thing I've seen all year, but the way it was executed did give me shades of that feeling of being excited for all that is new and possible with cinema in the current moment. It's not terribly original but it is new and fresh, and it even has time to put in some concepts about identity that are slightly upsetting to think about, even if it doesn't expound on them much.

I say "current moment" here simply as shorthand for any time when there are new and interesting films coming out, but there is also something that makes this movie and this scenario fit our literal current moment. It feels deeply relatable to watch someone confined alone, cut off from the rest of the world with only dim memories of having to be isolated for some reason relating to their medical safety. The main character is scared, hooked up to weird machines, unable to find out if anything is wrong with her or if she was exposed to the deadly virus she only has vague memories of. And also, this whole thing is possibly the most apt metaphor I can think of for human life more generally. We wake up, we struggle with the enormity of our existence, and then we must go back to sleep.

So it's Mélanie Laurent, with amnesia, in a box with an AI, for 100 minutes. Talking about the plot any more than that runs the risk of spoiling a movie that is full of twists and turns, but suffice it to say this does not go where you think it's going. There are lies and things that are concealed from the main character initially that make it difficult for the viewer to trust anything that happens all throughout the movie, but I felt like the point of this wasn't to mess with your head overmuch, and that's another reason why I liked it. The whole 100 minutes of this thing is a series of events being revealed to us in pretty much chronological order, instead of a bunch of cards being laid out and then yanked away again as falsehoods and tricks are disclosed. In short: it never made me feel stupid. It didn't even make me feel like I was being lied to as a viewer. I'm not trying to imply that a movie being obtuse or complicated is a bad thing; I don't need to have my hand held and be prohibited from thinking for myself. There's a lot of thinking and figuring that you have to do during Oxygène. I'm just trying to explain a very difficult to conceptualize feeling I got during this that it was being very earnest the entire time and not trying to make you doubt every little thing that happened.

I'm afraid but also pretty certain that this is going to be pigeonholed into being a Concept Movie because I guess it kind of is a Concept Movie. It's going to be a case of "hey have you seen that movie where the lady is stuck in a box" and not "hey have you seen that movie where the lady is stuck in a box during [gratuitous plot spoilers] and then it turns out she's [gratuitous plot spoilers]" because the main idea is actually the only thing you can say about it without giving the rest away. But this was so good that I don't want to see it become sensationalized, it's good even if you don't like sci-fi or are turned off by what sounds like a wacky idea. It's just good.