‘The Astronaut’: Cairo Review

Dir/scr. Nicolas Giraud. France. 2022. 110mins.

A film for anyone who ever dreamed of firing themselves into space — which, judging by Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme is many, many, millionaires – writer-director-actor Nicolas Giraud’s The Astronaut certainly succeeds in creating a lead character and a milieu which you’d be happy to send into orbit. This introspective tale of an astrophysicist – played by Giraud – and his tin can in the dank, rural west of France could do with some rocket fuel itself, although it has gotten as far as Cairo, where it world premieres in the International Competition.

 Clearly a labour of love for Giraud

Backed by Orange Studio and set for release in France through Diaphana where Giraud’s name (as an actor; his first film as director also failed to take off) and the presence of Mathieu Kassovitz could fire interest. Let’s-build-a-rocket movies never lack for viewers, but this is an uneasy meld of humourless art-film with a story of older geeks living out their space dreams. (The hero is a 40 year-old failed astronaut living on a farm with his supportive grandmother.) All you can do is wish it luck on its journey while hoping you’re nowhere near when the wreckage falls to earth.

The Astronaut stumbles on the first hurdle, with Giraud casting himself in the lead and playing Jim Desforges as an uptight, charisma-free obsessive. It’s hard to stick it out with Jim as the screenplay slowly teases out what he’s been up to; he’s the type of tight-jawed propulsion engineer his co-workers at Ariane avoid even as he has slowly been defrauding the company and his boss/friend Monsieur Dominique (Hippolyte Giradot) by ordering illicit rocket equipment. He has bet the farm as well, by taking out loans against it, all in the pursuit of his space dreams of building a rocket in the backyard with the help of grandmother Odette (Helene Vincente). 

The narrative takes off when Jim travels to the Pyrenees to persuade reclusive former French astronaut Kassov (Kassovitz) to take part in his mission to launch the first amateur manned rocket into space. Kassov is a bit of a maverick himself so, after some pro forma flouncing around (‘you’re crazy!’, etc), is ultimately seduced by the foolhardiness of the idea and the chance at being involved in offworldly activities for one last time. 

He joins Jim’s gang in the farm’s damp barn (the weather in Condat Sur Vienne, a village in Aquitaine where Giraud shot, is never good and, apart from some snow outside Kassov’s barn, the film is relentlessly dark). This so far consists of elderly neighbouring farmer Andre (Bruno Lochet), who Jim met in a local aeronautical club and who has invented some ‘maverick’ rocket-fuel, and granny. Jim tries to get a famous mathematician involved, but ends up with his brilliant young female student Izumi (Ayumi Roux) instead. Izumi is interested in space for environmental reasons, and is routinely dismissed and patronised by Jim.

Jim! There’s a reason why you’re still single. And, as Kassov has warned you: “You can’t cry in space.”

The film takes a sidetrip into Jim’s past, which isn’t as interesting as one might have hoped. His late farmer grandfather, Odette’s husband, was obsessed by space too, instilling the passion in his grandson. Jim has wanted to be an astronaut his whole life but failed the French exams (well, he came third, but that wasn’t good enough).  While his grandmother is his biggest supporter in his quest to go far above the world, the old dear hasn’t realised there’s a good chance he might not come back. His parents, meanwhile, rail against his inability to accept life on earth.

With a misfiring synth score which can give the incredibly serious proceedings an unintended cheesy air, The Astronaut is clearly a labour of love for Giraud. One line of dialogue gives an unintended chuckle, however: “When Elon Musk started out, everyone thought he was mad, but look at him now!” It’s meant as encouragement, but just underscores the general oddness of this piece in which audiences are meant to admire a man’s pursuit of his obsession at the expense of everyone and everything around him, the earth included. Perhaps that is admirable, who knows, but The Astronaut certainly doesn’t prove a case for it.