Oxygène.
Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur. what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot actually, but somehow we ended up with a winner.
First conceived as a Christie LeBlanc screenplay in 2017, Oxygène struggled through years of production hell. The original decision to cast Anne Hathaway in the lead role was quickly recognised as a mistake, and she was soon replaced by Noomi Rapace. Franck Khalfoun came on board to direct, with Aja producing.
But by 2020 it was all falling apart. Aja kicked Khalfoun out of the director's chair and seized it for himself, while Rapace was dismissed over concerns about 'ideological syncretism.'
Following a discussion with investors that Aja later described as 'passionate but not entirely unreasonable, with intermittent screams', Mélanie Laurent was chosen as the new lead.
Oxygène won't win any awards for innovation, and leans a trifle too heavily on its meagre cast of just three(!) credited characters, but its heart is in the right place and its cinematography implies the budget of a much bigger film than it actually is.
Mathieu Amalric is the clear audience favourite, with his cool and calming Parisian tones. Malik Zidi does what he usually does, and does it tolerably well. But it is Laurent who really steals the show as she grapples with the dilemmas of a late middle aged existential crisis.
It was Foucault who said 'People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.' Oxygène takes this wisdom and toys with it, teasing out the conceptual strands for a gentler, more compassionate examination.
Aja and Levasseur are intent on answering the questions we almost never dare to ask: questions about life, memory, dreams, and the philosophy of loveplay. The conceptual framework here is reminiscent of Brecht and Eisler, but with a distinctly Büchnerian flavour. It's an aggressively bold experiment, and I revelled in the audacity of it all.
I rate Oxygène at 23.31 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a perky 7/10 on IMDB.
