“Oxygen”: Mélanie Laurent delivers a breathtaking performance – 20 minutes
- The heroine of “Oxygen” by Alexandre Aja wakes up one day trapped in a cryogenic chamber without knowing how she got there.
- Mélanie Laurent is almost all the time alone on screen in this well-crafted suspense.
- The director of “Crawl” offers the actress a golden role that highlights their respective talents.
She only has a few hours to get by. She is alone and with amnesia, stuck in a cryogenic chamber. The heroine played by Mélanie Laurent in Oxygen by Alexandre Aja is not at the party. Despite everything, it is a golden role that the director ofCrawl offers him in this breathtaking thriller, available on Netflix from Wednesday.
The actress imposes herself in an overwhelming way, going from terror to determination and discouragement for a good suspense that almost always leaves her alone on the screen. “The film was not written with confinement in mind,” says the actress to 20 minutes, but it is certain that it takes on a new meaning when we see it today and that it becomes a metaphor for what we have lived. “
Crazy stage fright
During this five-week shooting in August 2020 in the company of a small team, Mélanie Laurent remained locked daily in the box. “I came out bloodless from those days even though everyone was very caring for me,” she says. He was a demanding character both physically and psychologically. This young woman must appeal to her memory and reconstruct the events that led to her imprisonment. It is only gradually that the puzzle takes shape in her head, as in that of a spectator trapped with her.
The main support of the heroine is the computer – sometimes soothing or exasperating, to which Mathieu Amalric lends his voice. “Playing this role stuck on me nervousness like I hadn’t felt for a long time,” admits the actress. I really questioned myself to experience the same thing as this wired woman everywhere who struggles for her survival with almost no movement. The result confirms that Mélanie Laurent is a great actress, especially when it is Alexandre Aja who frames her as closely as possible to capture the slightest of her expressions.
During filming, Mélanie Laurent’s main support was precisely the director. “He was impressively precise in her direction,” she recalls. I let myself be completely guided, which I appreciated all the more because I myself am also a director. »Mélanie Laurent is also in post-production for her new feature film The Bal des folles, adapted from the novel by
Victoria Mas.