Oxygène

There is only one possible musical suggestion for a French movie with that title.

 

Let's see, where do we begin? In a mesh coccoon inside a high-tech sarcophagus, gradually running out of air. And if that sounds like a prompt for some kooky old text-based adventure game, the feel actually matches fairly well. Please don't spoil your viewing by reading too much of any summary. This is... not a masterpiece, fine, but pretty good Science Fiction, implicitly rather high-concept, the sort of flick where you'd do yourself a disservice to pre-empt your own guesswork as to WTF is actually going on.

 

What can I say without giving too much away? That hiring a horror director for SF actually hit precisely the right note for once? That I was shocked a movie with a trapped starlet didn't resolve to her being tied to the train tracks by a rapist as we've grown to expect from our misandrist culture's nonstop effluvium of cheap propaganda? That it consciously avoids the gratuitous nudity its intimate confines would presume for most low-budget summer thrillers and is far more immersive for it? That you'll never guess who the villain is?

 

Just fire up Netflix and give it a chance. I'll be right here when you get back.

 

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Done? Did you guess it? I didn't. Not quite. The clone part was easy. But after it became less likely this would turn into some feminist screed, I'd then immediately jumped to the idea she must be an organ bank clone a la Never Let Me Go, and only gradually began to catch on with the gravity trick. And of course, you'll never guess who the villain is... because there isn't one. As in so much good SF, there are only Cold Equations, and generalized human stupidity somewhere in the background, and smart individuals doing their best in an inimical world.

 

I do have to remark "C'etait pas moi, je vous ai pas clones" not only displays the heroine's vigorous mental gymnastics, but is an elegant way of sidestepping the by now woefully overdone clone identity conflict to avoid it derailing the real climax. Kudos to the writer, director, star, everyone involved. Solid work all around.