Oxygen is the latest thriller from Alexandre Aja, coming to Netflix on May 12. The Crawl director tackles the tale of a woman who wakes up in a cryo box with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The talented Mélanie Laurent commands the screen as the mystery girl in question in this French-American co-production.
Aja and Laurent spoke to Screen Rant about what attracted them to the project and how they worked together to draw out the necessary roller coaster of emotion.
What attracted you both to the themes and concepts that we find in Oxygen?
Alexandre Aja: I would say that I always look for a reason to fall in love with a script. When I read Oxygen, I was finishing editing Crawl, and I didn't know anything about the story. I just went inside and I woke up in that box. I was wondering who I was and, with the character, I went from all that exploration of that mental maze until the big revelation that we cannot spoil too much.
But it was just like one of those stories that I felt was a very smart situation thriller and a very interesting survival story. But then the pandemic came, and everything took on another light. The movie became a way [deeper] and more intense introspection into exploring that existential quest of who we are and if there's way out of the situation we are in today.
Mélanie, I love sci-fi movies like this, because you peel the layers back and everything starts getting revealed little by little. There's such a great payoff, but for the majority of the film, it's really you in close quarters. Can you talk to me about some of the challenges you faced while shooting?
Mélanie Laurent: There is many. The first one on the list was the lines; a lot of lines, a lot of scientific lines, a lot of numbers. 3673654... I think I'm traumatized by that one. And Alex also asked me to know the script by heart before shooting, because he wanted to have the possibility of shooting right away, like, 30 pages in a row. Which was amazing to do, because obviously, you shoot like 25 minutes of the movie in one day and you go for it. You just dive into it, and then at the end of the day, you're like, "Dude, we just did 35 pages today." It's insane. It's not usual. But also the lines. That vocabulary was very, very hard for me.
And then second was... the rage. One emotion that I am not close to is rage and anger, and there were three big scenes and three big moments where he asked me - and he was very specific. He was like, "I want you to be like an animal in a cage who knows he's gonna die. And I want to see all that rage coming out through you." And I was like, "Okay, stop. Because rage? I don't know how to do that, so I don't know if I can deliver that." And he trusted me.
Receiving a beautiful script with an amazing part like this is really a gift. But when you also have an amazing director who's going to take care of everything - it's challenging, of course, but it's easy. You follow your director, and you're not afraid. You trust, and I think it was a trusting collaboration.
Alexandre Aja: I would have never been able to do anything without you doing you know all the things. I think that you play the animal in the cage very well.
Mélanie Laurent: Now I know how to do that.
Alex, what did Mélanie bring to the role that may have surprised you and wasn't necessarily on the page?
Alexandre Aja: It's the emotion. We knew, because I was on the script, that it was a roller coaster of different feelings. Sometime in the same scene, in the same page, on the same line, she goes from one to the other. But I couldn't imagine how strong it will feel when it becomes a real. I was on set, and I was moved to tears when she actually decided to give up.
I was also really excited when I saw her going back to that human instinct of surviving no matter what. All those elements back to back were just a beautiful journey as a filmmaker, but also I think as a viewer. Mélanie managed with this very strong emotion to take you into that journey, and she managed to also give the character such a human depth. I think that's what surprised me the most in the best way possible.
Sci-fi at its best can be used as a cautionary tale. With the way things are going, it's not so far-fetched to believe that something like this could happen. But what are you hoping audiences take away from Oxygen?
Alexandre Aja: I mean, the cautionary tale is definitely one of the missions of sci-fi in general - to think about who we are and what our relationship is to nature. And I think this is what I would love people to take from movie, that maybe we have to be ready for some kind of apocalypse, but maybe there is some other option that we can try to make happen before it's too late.
Oxygen is streaming on Netflix May 12.