Alexandre Aja has been infatuated by the style of one-location cinema. The director’s newest movie, “Oxygen,“ marks his deepest descent into this tingling fascination.
Within the likes of “Buried” with Ryan Reynolds or “Locke” with Tom Hardy, your entire movie takes place in a single medical cryo unit now not than a coffin. Our protagonist, Liz (Mélanie Laurent), wakes up on this confined area with a restricted provide of oxygen and should shortly restore her reminiscence earlier than time runs out.
Aja directed his first movie “Over the Rainbow” in 1997, which featured an house constructing caretaker with cannibalistic tendencies feasting on his residents. The filmmaker stated he additional developed this theme in “The Hills Have Eyes” — a remake of Wes Craven’s 1977 cult basic that follows a household combating off a bunch of cannibalistic mutants after their automotive breaks down within the desert.
“At first, I wasn’t wanting into what was attracting me or what type,” Aja stated. “I used to be going with my intestine intuition and my urge for food as an viewers member greater than a filmmaker.”
Trying again at his filmography, Aja stated he has at all times responded to the identical factor: an intense survival story. He stated the actual widespread floor between his final two movies, 2019’s gator-filled summer season blockbuster “Crawl” and “Oxygen,” was his attraction to filming in a single location.
These concepts of isolation and claustrophobia emanated in his thoughts after watching “The Shining” for the primary time as a toddler, which he stated modified his entire mind-set.
“That sort of robust emotion was one of many greatest visible and emotional shocks the place I used to be simply traumatized by it,” Aja stated.
When Aja labored on his first characteristic movie, 2003’s “Excessive Pressure,” he stated the thought was to have the viewer locked into that one night time at an remoted farmhouse. He stated an enormous a part of his job as a filmmaker is to create a world that the viewer can dwell in whereas incomes each showstopper alongside the best way. Aja describes a showstopper as a “second the place the performing, visible results, a shot” immediately throws the viewer again of their seat.
Describing “Oxygen” as “an actual emotional escape recreation,” Aja turned the problem of filming in a single single area into a chance. Utilizing a toolbox of cinematic instruments, the director stated he was in a position to change the type in virtually each sequence.
One other one among Aja’s targets was to craft a world of sci-fi that wasn’t too distant from our actuality, though a few of the sci-fi parts of the story turned actuality. The movie, which began taking pictures in July 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, hints at a virus that has plagued mankind. Aja stated these real-life circumstances prompted him to vary his movie in a delicate method.
“We didn’t want to clarify that a lot anymore,” Aja stated. “It was on everybody’s thoughts, so a few of the exposition and lots of dialogue weren’t obligatory anymore and we may simply give attention to what she was going by.”
Aja stated everybody on his crew was crammed with monstrous frustration after not with the ability to work throughout quarantine, which he attributed to the good kinetic power behind the venture.
A extra substantial shift was deciding to make the movie in French. Aja stated Laurent was the primary person who got here to thoughts to play the lead position as a result of her “very wealthy vary of performing abilities.”
“The movie is all about that psychological labyrinth of exploring who she is and attempting to set off a reminiscence to recollect who she is,” Aja stated. “She’s going to search out out about herself that she has a really robust scientific background, so I wanted somebody that would have that feels actual in that subject.”
Aja stated that Laurent, who starred in “Inglourious Basterds” and “6 Underground,” was already considering the place she wished her profession to go when he despatched over the script for “Oxygen.”
“She wished to return to one thing that was actually difficult, one thing removed from something she did earlier than and in addition one thing that was speaking in regards to the world as it’s in the present day,” Aja stated. “So in some way I had the right venture for her.”
Shanna Besson/Netflix
Laurent’s upcoming thriller, “Le bal des folles,” will observe a younger girl who discovers she has a supernatural means to listen to the lifeless. On high of co-writing and directing the movie, Laurent will headline the venture. Her historic deal with Amazon marks the studio’s first unique French movie.
Aja, however, is engaged on a number of initiatives that he’s “completely passionate” about. Increasing on the thought of confined area, he’s at the moment engaged on an untitled choose-your-own-adventure-style haunted home movie for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Companions. The interactive horror venture will characteristic a branched narrative within the realm of “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch,” which Aja stated he hopes audiences can watch in a movie show. He’s additionally engaged on a “very intense and scary” supernatural movie for Searchlight Photos.
After successful greatest overseas movie on the Golden Globes, “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho famously stated, “When you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you can be launched to so many extra superb movies.” Aja stated that “Parasite” and its domination over awards season “created a full, completely different world” for worldwide filmmakers.
Mixed with a global powerhouse like Netflix, which streams movies like “Oxygen” in over 190 international locations, Aja felt extra assured that he may make his movie in French and nonetheless attain a bigger viewers.
“Once I had the chance of doing “The Hills Have Eyes” within the US, I knew that strolling in English was the one option to make the kind of films that can get seen all all over the world,” Aja stated. “As we speak, the whole lot has modified.”
Now, in response to the filmmaker, there’s a better sense of freedom by way of respecting the language of every story.
“It doesn’t need to be in English it doesn’t matter what,” Aja stated. “You possibly can keep very bold and picture that they are going to be launched in different international locations, even when they’re in a distinct language.”
When Aja first began making style films again within the early 2000s, he stated he was fearful that the viewers’s yearning for “one thing intense and suspenseful” would collapse after various years. To his aid, the style solely saved rising.
“Perhaps it’s as a result of our society wants these films to train our deepest concern,” Aja stated. “It’s a tremendous time to make films and to open dialogue about who we’re and if there’s a method out of the scenario we’re in in the present day.”
Shanna Besson/Netflix