Cert 3 Stars 12A

Bond girl turned Golden Globe nominated star of TV’s Penny Dreadful and recently seen as a scheming madame in mini-series The Luminaries, Eva Green takes her career to another level in this thoughtful and tender drama about an astronaut preparing to blast off on a year long mission.

As Sarah the arduous training puts Green through her physical paces, but that’s far easier than the emotional turmoil the script puts Sarah through, as the single mother has to make an impossible choice between her life long dream and her responsibility to her eight-year-old daughter, played with charm by young Zélie Boulant.

Whereas Ryan Gosling’s First Man and Brad Pitt’s Ad Astra see emotionally closed men go to space to bond with family, Sarah is desperate not to lose her emotional connection on Earth.

Written and directed by Alice Winocour, whose previous film was 2015’s powerful drama, Mustang, this is another well observed essay on female experience which similarly rejects loud macho showboating for quiet understatement, deep currents and subtle complexity.