Conceived before the pandemic, Oxygen — or Oxygène in its original French — perfectly taps into the claustrophobic anxieties of the ’rona age. Originally set to star Anne Hathaway (who starred in her own pandemic film, Locked Down), then Noomi Rapace (who remains as an executive producer here), Alexandre Aja shot the film with a minimal cast (Inglourious Basterds’ Mélanie Laurent eventually signed on) and crew in lockdown where the synergy between subject matter and the world around it couldn’t have been more apt. Aja, who has previously mined scares from killer fish (Piranha 3D) and killer alligators (Crawl), this time applies his prodigious technical prowess to a more complex study of isolation and identity. In outline, it sounds like a high-tech version of Ryan Reynolds’ trapped-in-a-coffin movie Buried; in reality, helped by an outstanding Laurent, Oxygen is so much more.
The concept is sky-high. A woman who we come to know as Omicron 267 (Laurent) snaps wide awake, wrapped in a cocoon and with restraining straps across her chest. She quickly discerns that she is in a souped-up cryogenic chamber but — upping the stakes on Buried — has no memory of where she is, how she got there and, perhaps worse of all, who she is. Answers start to come from MILO (Medical Interface Liaison Operator, voiced by Quantum Of Solace’s Mathieu Amalric), an onboard computer system designed to monitor her status.
It sounds like a high-tech version of Ryan Reynolds’ Buried; in reality, helped by an outstanding Laurent, Oxygen is so much more.
Apart from the amnesia, Omicron 267’s biggest problem is that she is running out of oxygen, which is currently at 35 per cent and counting (at three per cent, the CEP, or Charitable Euthanasia Protocol, activates). Here the thrill of Oxygen kicks in as Omicron 267 begins to negotiate furiously with MILO to try and get the answers that will fill in the blanks in her past and get her free (in a mordant comment on modern life, the thing that is stopping her getting out is that she can’t remember the Administrator’s password). There are glimpses of possible memories (the sea, a husband, a hospital gurney), a conversation with the police, who try to track down the pod’s whereabouts, and a run-in with a needle on an arm that offers sedatives or palliative care. Then, in a spark of inspiration, she asks MILO to run a DNA test that proves to be a game changer.
Aja and Christie LeBlanc’s lean script ratchet up the tension and the anxiety in this first stretch, Liz’s guessing games with MILO extremely engaging. As a filmmaker, Aja finds a dizzying array of different angles and lighting cues to stop Liz’s predicament becoming visually tedious. But the real ace in the hole here is Laurent, who is by turns steely and desperate. She makes Liz’s mental gymnastics under pressure believable and, in her responses to MILO, also lends the film a neat and much-needed line in dry humour.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, when Aja has to start revealing his hand, the film’s grip starts to lessen, drifting into exposition and BIG themes that feel at odds with the small-scale set-up. Nonetheless, the result is still Aja’s most engrossing, satisfying film to date. Sometimes there is something to be said for thinking inside the box.
