Digital/VODebut--Alice Winocour's PROXIMA: Let's train for Mars while trashing protocol

Few films have impressed me so much at their outset (and well beyond) before collapsing into utter stupidity by their finale as does PROXIMA, the latest from Alice Winocour, the talented woman responsible for writing Mustang and writing and directing Disorder and Augustine. 

Perhaps the international space program (or what passes for this in the movie) is set up differently from other space programs -- or any rigorous government program that depends on carefully adhering to high standards in order to achieve difficult results -- because what the movie's heroine Sarah (played very well by that always interesting actress Eva Green) is allowed to get away with here proves downright dumb. As this movie continues, deal-breaker follows deal-breaker until the last ridiculous event, which trumps them all.

Ms Winocour, pictured at right, tells the tale of Sarah, her "ex" Thomas, and their daughter Stella, who is both precocious and dyslexic. Sarah is in training for space travel to Mars, and as the movie opens, she's just learned she has been chosen as part of the crew. Thomas is pleased for her and happy to have charge of Stella while Sarah is gone. 

Stella (an excellent Zélie Boulant, below) is frightened of losing her mom, for good reason of course, and Sarah is, we perceive more fully as the movie moves along, wracked with guilt about leaving her daughter. How this guilt plays out, simultaneous with the training for space travel Sarah is undergoing, forms the meat of the movie 

Winocour captures well the parent-child bond (of both parents) and shows how differently this plays out when the woman has one of those give-it-everything careers, as does Sarah, in which the needs of motherhood seem in direct conflict with that career.

There is the usual male entitlement number to endure (Matt Dillon, at right, above, plays the head of Sarah's space crew), but then come those occasions when Sarah simply breaks protocol so that she can have it both ways: motherhood and space travel. Breaking this is one thing, but then we wait for the penalty for this -- which never comes. This is ludicrous, since it becomes more and more clear that having Sarah as a crew member is likely to endanger that crew.

But, hey, there must be some kind of feminist wish-fulfillment going on because it seems you actually can have it all. There are audiences out there who will buy into this sort of very weird reasoning, but TrustMovies is not among them. I am saddened because the performances are first-rate, and much of the dialog and situations are well-handled, too. 

Back in the 1960s/70s there was a movement known as "logical consequences,"in which an action has its consequence that follows logically. (Used as a parenting tool, as I recall, it may still be in vogue, although clearly it has never been activated nor even thought about by Donald Trump and his minions.)  Any sort of logical consequence for Sarah's actions is what's missing from this movie, and that lack turns a very good film into a very bad one.

From Vertical Entertainment and running 107 minutes, Proxima hits digtial streaming and VOD this Friday,. November 6. Your move. (It might help if Vertical Entertainment listed the film on its web site -- at least in the Coming Soon section.)

Alice Winocur's DISORDER proves a paranoid thriller with excitement, depth and character

The first thing you may notice about DISORDER, the new film from Alice Winocur (shown below, who gave us the unusual Augustin three years back) is its sound design. As we follow a young soldier with PTSD, we're aware of a kind of pulse, beeps and background noise of all sorts, sometimes quite subtle, other times more forceful. I had to stop the disc once, just to be sure the sounds were not coming from somewhere in my apartment. No, they're in the mind and feelings of our protagonist, Vincent, played by Matthias Schoenaerts (of Bullhead, Rust and Bone, A Little Chaos, Far From the Madding Crowd and The Danish Girl), in what may be the best of his many good performances so far.

You could hardly ask for two more disparate movies - in terms of theme, content and genre than Ms Winocur's Augustine and Disorder (the filmmaker, who also co-wrote the screenplay for Mustang, is shown at right), yet she handles both films with an assured hand that gives us what those themes and genres need -- plus something more. Character would seem to be paramount to this filmmaker, and she provides it beautifully in both movies, while also adhering in her latest to some of the important conventions requires by the thriller genre.

That "character" is shown most prominently and importantly via Vincent (Schoenaerts is shown above and below), whose PTSD appears to have made him unable to continue his military service. He wants to, but things don't look promising. A compatriot gets him a security gig with a group who are protecting the home of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. When that businessman is simultaneously called away on emergency business and after Vincent has shown a bit more than mere competence on the job -- or maybe it's simply due to his friend's influence -- he is asked to stay on until the businessman returns to guard his house, his wife and his son.

The entire set-up here is geared for high stakes security, and therefore paranoia, and Ms Winocur very quietly and cleverly allows us to feel all of this without ever being certain whether what we're experiencing is actual danger or merely professional paranoia. Add to this Vincent's own unsettling symptoms, and we're on very shaky ground. For nearly the first half of the film we're kept on our toes and a bit breathless, wondering and waiting for one of those shoes to drop.

When the moment comes for action, the filmmaker proves to be more than up to the task. This scene is absolutely crackerjack -- thrillingly you-are-there -- and its aftermath (why are the authorities behaving in this odd way?) even more so. And Winocur brings everything to completion in a strangely satisfying manner than manages to bring a kind of closure, even as it honors its quest for character with a marvelous combination of strength, precision -- and doubt.

Despite its genre, the movie really has only four important characters, Vincent, the businessman's wife (a fine job by the always glamorous and usually expert Diane Kruger, above), his young son (a good, unfussy and believable job by Zaïd Errougui-Demonsant, below, left), and Paul Hamy as Vincent's friend, Denis (center, two photos below) who, due to all the paranoia surrounding us, we can't help but wonder just how good of a friend he really is.

The filmmaker captures well that initial distance and class difference between employer and employee, and she allows this distance to properly lengthen or shorten, as things take turns for worse and better. For their part Schoenaerts and Kruger do a fine job of making their relationship count, while keeping it as off-balance as is all else around us.

Finally, as it becomes clear that we can no longer trust police, government and who knows who else, we must reply on character.  It is here that Winocur makes her final and finest stand. Disorder gives us much of what genre fans will demand, and then a little more. I think you will remember it oddly and fondly -- right up until its final moment, which you will discuss and perhaps argue over.

From IFC Films and running a nicely-paced and just long-enough 98 minutes, Disorder opens in New York City this coming Friday, August 12, at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and IFC Center -- while simultaneously becoming available via VOD. We're told that a nationwide, limited-release rollout will follow.

Alice Winocour's AUGUSTINE: the doctor-patient relationship gets a feminist slant

Maybe "slant" (see the headline above) is too strong a term. In AUGUSTINE, the quiet, thoughtful and surprisingly masterful first-full-length film from Alice Winocour (who was a co-writer on Ursula Meier's Home), we observe the relationship between the famous 19th century doctor, Jean-Martin Charcot, and his star patient, the titular Augustine, a girl in her late teens working as a kitchen maid who suffers from seizures and is taken to the hospital where Charcot is in charge. For me, this movie seemed a hugely feminist piece of art, though it never raises its voice or even speaks its theme aloud. Instead it simply shows us the state of women in the mid-1800s, particularly those in the lower class. And how, in every way, the male rules the roost, whether that roost be at work, play or in the domicile.

Ms Winocour, shown at right, captures the time, place and people with remarkable veracity and ease. She creates a generally dark piece, especially in terms of theme, and then executes this via the script (in which words are used sparingly yet count for much) and in the circumspect digital cinematography (by George Lechaptois), muted music (Jocelyn Pook) and beautiful, rich and oddly bleak art direction and production design (Arnoud de Moleron). Everything works toward the idea of repression, expected and carried out. Women were, in every way, available for the amusement, use, entertainment and experimentation of and by men. Nowhere in the film itself does Winocour tell us that her film is based on a real incident (in fact, on an entire slew of them). We grasp this, even so.

The filmmkaer has wisely chosen her three leading players with an eye for ability, class and in the case of the woman who plays Augustine, surprise. In this role, the singer/actress Soko (above, seen previously by me only in A l'origine) proves a wonderful choice. She has qualities both feral and elegant, intelligent and enormously sensual. Augustine appears initially needy, but uses every opportunity to learn and grow. She wins us over completely and does this by not trying. She never asks for sympathy and hence gets it in spades.

As Dr. Charcot, one of France's leading actors, Vincent Lindon (shown above and below, left), proves an inspired choice (though not, it is said, the first choice; that would have been Belgian actor Benoît Poelvoorde). Lindon does "interiority" and repression about as well as anyone, and he uses that ability here to help us understand this doctor's sense of entitlement, along with his slow coming-to-terms with his buried feelings.

Chiara Mastroianni uses her strength and her own quite special ability to indicate interior hurt to create the doctor's sadly misused wife. This woman comes from money and class and gives her husband the career connections he so needs. (Ms Mastroianni also looks sensational in mid-1800's garb.)

Augustine is open-ended, beginning in media res (ending there, too), with not everything explained or underlined along the way. Yet all you need to know -- and feel -- is here. This is a very fine first feature.

From Music Box Films and running 102 minutes, the movie opens this Friday in Manhattan at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and Film Forum, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal, Town Center 5 and Playhouse 7.