Prometo volver

The movie centers on Sarah, a French astronaut undergoing training before going to the Internation Space Station, and her relationship with her somewhat sensitive daughter Stella. We alternate between her gruelling training and her difficulties being a mother at the same time. Don't expect flashy sci-fi here; the action remains firmly grounded on Earth, with most scenes either at the European Space Agency center in Cologne (looks like any adminstrative building), Germany or in the post-Soviet setting of Star City in Baïkonur, Kazakhstan. Eva Green's performance is amazing, though her role suffers a little from a less-than-realistic twist towards the end. I found Zélie Boulant, who plays little Stella, equally impressive; and the mother-daughter relationship really makes for a beautiful story. The supporting cast is also very good, I though Matt Dillon did a good job as a tough-but-fair NASA astronaut going on the same mission as Sarah. His character seemed a bit like a cliché boorish-American-guy at first, but that faded away fast enough.

Proxima is a very sincere, intimate and devoid of pathos cinema. This is the psychological portrait of a woman devoted to her dream of flying into space. When the main character approaches her goal, she begins to understand how difficult it will be to leave the planet. The picture is more like a documentary than a science fiction story. Great Eva Green and good pictures of the Bajkonur spaceport deserve praise.

Apparently the writer thinks that only female astronauts are parents. Either that, or male astronauts don't really have relationships with their children. I don't think one would ever see a movie like this where a male astronaut's relationship with his child was the primary focus of the movie. And then, at the end of the movie, she does something really stupid that would very likely end her career and possibly put her colleagues in danger. The parts of the movie that are about preparing to go into space were interesting (though slow), but the human drama parts were annoying.

Sarah (Eva Green) is given the chance of a lifetime to go to the International Space Station for a year. The trouble is it means leaving her beloved daughter Stella (Zélie Boulant-Lemesle). The film charts her exhausting and often restrictive training whilst she tries to cope with leaving her daughter and trying to do and say the right things.

This is actually quite a simple tale, told and acted well about the relationship between mother and young daughter when pressures threaten to pull them apart. Green in excellent struggling between the two most important things in her life, whilst young Boulant-Lemesle is extremely impressive as Stella. Care, this is a straight sometimes moving drama. It is not an adventure or a sci-fi film, you've been warned, although the training is interesting.

I have to say I went in optimistic and left disappointed.