Cert 15 Stars 3

Natalie Portman is out of this world in this sometimes trippy drama loosely based on a real life astronaut who suffered an emotional crash on her return to Earth.

The role of Lucy, a sharp and super fit spacewoman is a smart fit for the one-time Oscar winner, allowing her to be ferocious, funny and flirty, and refusing to be a victim.

Having experienced the infinite majesty of the cosmos during a spacewalk, Lucy struggles with her humdrum suburban life with her dull Christian husband.

An affair with a predatory fellow astronaut, played by hunky Jon Hamm from TV’s Mad Men, becomes the catalyst for Lucy’s obsessive perfectionism to explode with violent consequences.

This could have been a rerun of Fatal Attraction, but Portman and director Noah Hawley skilfully turn a story of an driven personality into a hymn of female freedom, and a survivor’s story which emphasises a woman’s ability to change, to never allow oneself to be suffocated, and always to be dreaming of the stars.