Sandra Hülser and Lars Eidinger are currently among the most sought-after German actors. While Hülser is celebrated for her performances in “Anatomy of a Case” and “The Zone of Interest,” Eidinger has also been hard to ignore for years. He currently plays the role of an unscrupulous Nazi in the Netflix production ‘All the Light We Don’t See’.
Today, January 10, you can pick them up at arte from 8:15 PM together in a movie – even though they don’t have a single scene together. In their supporting roles in “Proxima – the Astronaut” they still convince and support the great Eva Green, who played the Bond girl in “Casino Royale” and most recently as Milady Winter in “The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan” in the cinema was showing.
Eva Green in her best role
In ‘Proxima’ we see Eva Green as Sarah Loreau, who wants to be the first woman to explore Mars. She has wanted to become an astronaut all her life and with training and a bit of luck the time has come: she is selected for a one-year mission. But first she must complete a training program that will prepare her and her crewmates Mike Shannon (Matt Dillon) and Anton Ocheivsky (Aleksey Fateev) for all conceivable eventualities and survival in space. Sarah reaches physical and psychological limits during the preparation period, not least because saying goodbye to her daughter Stella (Zélie Boulant) weighs heavily on her.
What’s special about ‘Proxima’ is its almost documentary authenticity – if you’re expecting great science fiction here, you might be a little disappointed. The film offers a realistic insight into the major, all-too-everyday challenges that astronauts face. The film was shot in authentic locations in Star City, at the ESA astronaut center in Cologne and in Baikonur. A making-of of the film would definitely be worth seeing, but unfortunately the bonus material in the home theater release is quite sparse. If you prefer to watch the film independently of television, that is also possible “Proxima” on Blu-ray or DVD at Amazon* to retrieve:
If you’re an Amazon Prime customer, you can also stream the film there for free*. All you have to do is sign up for the superfresh channel free 30 day trial. If you do not want to cancel again, you will pay 6.99 euros per month after the trial period.
It’s a man’s world
‘Proxima’ is not so much a film about distant worlds, as one might assume given the subject, but rather a film about our world, which is still largely male-dominated. – and with Sarah, the astronaut, this becomes all too clear. When she said that, her mother told her “This is not a job for girls!” when she was little, or when she had to defend herself against, say, the loudmouth Mike Shannon.
In the 1980s, women were given 100 tampons in space, NASA developed special make-up bags for space travel and the first all-female ISS crew only existed in 2019. Work and environment are interchangeable: whether you are an astronaut, top manager, or, as Todd Field impressively showed this year with Cate Blanchett in “Tár”, conductor: Place a woman instead of a man and the image vibrates.
Is the compatibility of work and parenthood or motherhood already a gauntlet in ‘normal’ life, a woman or even a mother at the lonely helm? Difficult. This becomes even clearer because Sarah’s male colleagues seem to have no problem with the fact that they too have to leave their children with their mother.
Ultimately, “Proxima” doesn’t thrive on great show value and effects, but rather on the conflicts of its protagonist with herself, her family and the world she is leaving for a while. This is both moving and enlightening.
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