pace movies have repeatedly provided the most intense and high-
stakes examples of works in which the wife stays home worrying
about her husband while he is busy worrying about survival. But
in Alice Winocour’s Proxima, a woman astronaut played by Eva Green
refuses to take on the cruel and macho stance of countless cinematic dads
who sternly leave their families behind, and instead tries to find a way of
both fulfilling her dreams and raising her daughter with love.LWLies: Why make a film about going to space? Winocour: When I
make a film, I always need to project myself in a world that is far away and
unknown. The more intimate it is, the farther it needs to be. My first film,
Augustine, was set in another time period. Disorder was set in the world
of soldiers. Here, what I wanted to talk about was the mother-daughter
relationship, which is something that is very close to me, so I needed the
story to take place in a very faraway world.In the film, we see lots of details about the reality of being an astronaut,
beside the trip and the training. It’s a film about life on earth and the dream
of space. I wanted to talk about the mother-daughter relationship and the
separation, and focusing on an astronaut allowed for a metaphor: she leaves
her daughter like she leaves the planet. I felt like there was something poetic
in confronting these two different scales: the small and trivial, with the
infinitely big, galaxies and distant planets. “Proxima” is also the name of the
galaxy closest to Earth, which is still very far – just like the mother is the closest
person to her daughter while still belonging to a different galaxy. “Proxima”
means “the next one” in Spanish, so there is also this idea of transmission from
mother to daughter. Is she telling her that one should strive to be a perfect
mother, or to live their dreams?In addressing this dilemma, you also bring up and confront lots of cliches:
the macho astronaut, played by Matt Dillon, and the idea that women
shouldn’t be in space. I wanted to talk about women in general, because
you don’t need to be in this particular line of work to be confronted with
this dilemma. Matt Dillon’s character is kind of the “bad guy” at the
beginning. I needed an interesting actor like him to then show that this
character is more profound than he initially seems to be. At first, he doesn’t
know how to behave with her: should he sleep with her? Should she be his
enemy? I wanted to show how the relationships organise and reorganise
themselves, and how the men also need to find their place. This film was
also about showing how, when circumstances change, each person finds
their place in their own way.How did this work of scales translate into your work with the actors?
There was an intense connection between the whole team because we
were all far away from home, forced to live together, and aware of our
immense privilege. We were filming at the only place on the planet where
rockets leave the Earth, so it wasn’t like going on set! Even if you’re Matt
Dillon, it’s something very special. Astronauts told us what it was like to
see the Earth turn. They think about our planet like it’s a vehicle moving
around — they have a completely different point of view from ours.What do you think of the recent wave of space movies like Gravity and
Interstellar, then First Man and Ad Astra? When I work on a project,
I try to see all the films that have been made about the topic. I think we
are getting so many space movies because we are feeling very vulnerable
about the state of our planet. Space movies, which used to be largely about
anticipation, often start on a post-apocalyptic planet, and the characters
need to find a home elsewhere. But our bodies were designed to live on
Earth. So I wanted to make a film that shows what binds us to Earth and
how difficult it is to leave. In American space movies, it always seems very
easy, but that pull is violent. In space, people grow between 5 and 10cm,
their cells age faster, their vision, sense of balance and lungs worsen. In my
work, I’m interested in how, when we can’t express the things we feel, our
bodies tell them. Here, I wanted to film Eva Green’s body as she mutates to
become a space creature.The film doesn’t really try to make us understand why Sarah wants to
go to space. There is a hint of a motive: Sarah’s mother told her it wasn’t
a job for a woman. Here again, there is this idea of the things we inherit
from our parents. There is the thrill of transgression, and the desire to
explore which is part of human nature. For astronauts, there is also the
idea of competition and performance – like high level athletes, they want
to push the boundaries of what is possible. The astronauts I met were
like Greek gods: they have superpowers, but they also have very humane
weaknesses. Sarah begins the film as a kind of machine, but her emotions
catch up with her. The women I met all showed amazing powers of self-
control. When you have tons of explosives under you at all times, you can’t
let your emotions get the best of you. So I wanted to see how these kinds
of women would deal with motherhood. Women in cinema are almost
always represented as mater dolorosa, but there are many different types
of mothers. I remember reading Calamity Jane’s letters to her daughter,
when I was little; we don’t know if they were truly written by her, but it was
striking to imagine this adventurous woman being a motherAlice Winocour
The talented French director describes how she filmed Eva Green
turning into a “space creature” in her new work, Proxima.
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Interview by ELENA LAZIC Illustration by MARINA ESMERALDOINTERVIEW 077IN CONVERSATION