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Eva Green on Playing an Astronaut in ‘Proxima’

Eva Green. (AP)
Eva Green. (AP)
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Eva Green on Playing an Astronaut in ‘Proxima’

Eva Green. (AP)
Eva Green. (AP)

Movies about astronauts and space are so often also about estranged fathers and sons. So it’s a welcome respite that in the new film “Proxima,” now available to rent on demand, the focus is on a mother, played by Eva Green, and her grade school age daughter, Stella, who she must leave behind for the opportunity to go to space.

It’s a subtle yet powerful film from French director Alice Winocour and many have singled out Green’s performance as one of her best.

The Associated Press spoke to Green about the big issues “Proxima” addresses, from the guilt of being a working mother to sexism, and also how fun it is to play an astronaut. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.

AP: What did you find interesting about this story?
Green: I thought it was an amazing love story. The connection that my character and her daughter have is very beautiful and very powerful. And to play a character who is constantly torn between her passion of being an astronaut and her love for her daughter was very appealing. And playing an astronaut is like a fantasy! It’s very empowering. I love doing research on stuff like this. It was a good excuse to explore this world, which was completely unknown to me.

AP: The motherhood and work conundrum is a big one that this film tackles with a lot of nuance and empathy.
Green: I think lots of women will identify with this. And I don’t know if the movie gives an answer, but lots of women are faced with the dilemma of having a high-powered career or having a family. And it’s always a bit taboo. It doesn’t look very good to kind of abandon your children. I think this movie also encourages women that it’s OK to be ambitious and to go against conventions and to pursue your dream. But there is always that enormous feeling of guilt, which is absolutely human and very complex.

AP: Was it personal for you or your director?
Green: (Alice) actually has a daughter who is the exact same age as the actress who plays Stella. So it came from her guts, this project. Even me, I don’t have children and I understand this internal conflict. On another level, I have a dog and it is a big deal to leave him and do something for work.

AP: Was this something you talked to your mother (actor Marlène Jobert) about?
Green: We talked more about the fact that she was an astronaut and how cool it was. But I have a twin sister, and when we were born, my mom really slowed down her career to raise the kids.

AP: How did you prepare to play an astronaut? Did you get to meet any?
Green: Alice is very nerdy, a bit like me. She does lots of homework and she really wanted me to meet some astronauts and to go to the training center in Cologne and to train with some of the real trainers, Russian trainers in particular, one who was quite harsh on me because obviously I know nothing about being an astronaut. But it was quite comical.

It’s amazing to see how passionate those guys are. They go back home and they work, work, work, work, work. When we were in Moscow at Star City there was this sense of loneliness. And sometimes I was like, “Oh my God, poor them!” They have absolutely no life! But they love it. They love that sense of sacrifice and dedication for science. We met several French astronauts and we were like touching something sacred almost. There is something saint-like like about astronauts. They feel like they’ve seen the unknown. So it was a real treat.

AP: The film also explores the sexism she experiences at work. Did that ring true to what you saw?
Green: The women that I met were very ballsy and really, really strong. But we’re not as strong as men. You have to wear the very heavy spacesuit and have stronger shoulders than normal women. You have to adapt to this world made by men for men. You have to constantly prove yourself. You have to train harder, work harder. You have to be a bit masochistic, basically.

AP: What was one of the most memorable things about this experience?
Green: What was very exciting was the travel to those very sacred places, like Star City. For me, my favorite thing ever was a military plane — you needed the visa and all of this and I felt I was entering another dimension like in “Star Wars.”

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Movie Review: A Weird ‘Superman’ Is Better than a Boring One

Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
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Movie Review: A Weird ‘Superman’ Is Better than a Boring One

Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)
Cast member David Corenswet attends a premiere for the film "Superman" at the TCL Chinese theater in Los Angeles, California, US, July 7, 2025. (Reuters)

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a ... a purple and orange shape-shifting chemical compound?

Writer-director James Gunn’s “Superman” was always going to be a strange chemistry of filmmaker and material. Gunn, the mind behind “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Suicide Squad,” has reliably drifted toward a B-movie superhero realm populated (usually over-populated) with the lesser-known freaks, oddities and grotesquerie of back-issue comics.

But you don’t get more mainstream than Superman. And let’s face it, unless Christopher Reeve is in the suit, the rock-jawed Man of Steel can be a bit of a bore. Much of the fun and frustration of Gunn’s movie is seeing how he stretches and strains to make Superman, you know, interesting.

In the latest revamp for the archetypal superhero, Gunn does a lot to give Superman (played with an easy charm by David Corenswet) a lift. He scraps the origin story. He gives Superman a dog. And he ropes in not just expected regulars like Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) but some less conventional choices — none more so than that colorful jumble of elements, Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan).

Metamorpho, a melancholy, mutilated man whose powers were born out of tragedy, is just one of many side shows in “Superman.” But he’s the most representative of what Gunn is going for. Gunn might favor a traditional-looking hero at the center, like Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord in “Guardians of the Galaxy.” And Corenswet, complete with hair curl, looks the part, too. But Gunn’s heart is with the weirdos who soldier on.

The heavy lift of “Superman” is making the case that the perfect superhuman being with “S” on his chest is strange, too. He’s a do-gooder at a time when no one does good anymore.

Not everything works in “Superman.” For those who like their Superman classically drawn, Gunn’s film will probably seem too irreverent and messy. But for anyone who found Zack Snyder’s previous administration painfully ponderous, this “Superman,” at least, has a pulse.

It would be hard to find a more drastic 180 in franchise stewardship. Where Snyder’s films were super-serious mythical clashes of colossuses, Gunn’s “Superman” is lightly earthbound, quirky and sentimental. When this Superman flies, he even keeps his arms back, like an Olympic skeleton rider.

We begin not on Krypton or Kansas but in Antarctica, near the Fortress of Solitude. The opening titles set-up the medias res beginning. Three centuries ago, metahumans first appeared on Earth. Three minutes ago, Superman lost a battle for the first time. Lying bloodied in the snow, he whistles and his faithful super dog, Krypto, comes running.

Like some of Gunn’s other novelty gags (I’m looking at you Groot), Krypto is both a highlight and overused gag throughout. Superman is in the midst of a battle by proxy with Luthor. From atop his Luthor Corp. skyscraper headquarters, Luther gives instructions to a team sitting before computer screens while, on a headset, barking out coded battle directions to drone-assisted henchmen. “13-B!” he shouts, like a Bingo caller.

Whether this is an ideal localizing of main characters in conflict is a debate that recedes a bit when, back in Metropolis, Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet. There’s Wendell Pierce as the editor-in-chief, Perry White, and Skyler Gisondo as Jimmy Olsen. But the character of real interest here is, of course, Lois.

She and Kent are already an item in “Superman.” When alone, Lois chides him over the journalistic ethics of interviewing himself after some daring do, and questions his flying into countries without their leaders’ approval. Brosnahan slides so comfortably into the role that I wonder if “Superman” ought to have been “Lois,” instead. Her scenes with Corenswet are the best in the film, and the movie loses its snap when she’s not around.

That’s unfortunately for a substantial amount of time. Luthor traps Superman in a pocket universe (enter Metamorpho, among others) and the eccentric members of the Justice Gang — Nathan Fillion’s Green Lantern, Edi Gathegi’s Mister Terrific and Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl — are called upon to lend a hand. They come begrudgingly. But if there’s anyone else that comes close to stealing the movie, it’s Gathegi, who meets increasingly absurd cataclysm with wry deadpan.

The fate of the world, naturally, again turns iffy. There’s a rift in the universe, not to mention some vaguely defined trouble in Boravia and Jarhanpur. In such scenes, Gunn's juggling act is especially uneasy and you can feel the movie lurching from one thing to another. Usually, that's Krypto's cue to fly back into the movie and run amok.

Gunn, who now presides over DC Studios with producer Peter Safran, is better with internal strife than he is international politics. Superman is often called “the Kryptonian” or “the alien" by humans, and Gunn leans into his outsider status. Not for the first time, Superman’s opponents try to paint him as an untrustworthy foreigner. With a modicum of timeliness, “Superman” is an immigrant story.

Mileage will inevitably vary when it comes to Gunn’s idiosyncratic touch. He can be outlandish and sweet, often at once. In a conversation between metahumans, he will insert a donut into the scene for no real reason, and cut from a body falling through the air to an Alka-Seltzer tablet dropping into a glass. Some might call such moments glib, a not-unfair label for Gunn. But I’d say they make this pleasantly imperfect “Superman” something quite rare in the assembly line-style of superhero moviemaking today: human.