Hello everyone! I'm back much later than usual this week because everything has been quite hectic recently. I missed blogging terribly though, so to celebrate my return, I chose an extraordinary film: Raw by the brilliant Julia Ducournau! I've heard Ducournau's name a lot recently as she won the grand prize at Cannes Film Festival with her latest feature Titane, so that led me to explore her films more. Much to my delight, Raw never disappointed me and I can't wait to talk more about it! Thanks for being here and I hope you enjoy reading the post (I even missed writing that sentence!).
Aforementioned, Raw is written and directed by Julia Ducournau. It is her first feature film, though she directed a short feature called Junior in 2011 before. Both films carry similar themes in them: a coming-of-age story told in a uniquely exciting way. With its interesting plot, Raw takes centre around our protagonist Justine who demonstrates cannibalistic behaviour throughout the film. Putting cannibalism as the main subject of this film would be wrong though, it explores so many other themes that I'll mention later on in the post.
Back to the director, with both her parents being medical doctors, Ducournau developed a keen interest in human anatomy at an early age. Even though she doesn't prefer labeling her films' genre, they usually fall under "organic horror" much because of that reason. According to what I read from IMDB, Ducournau sees her works as a mix of comedy, drama, teen movie, and body horror - and Raw promises to give them all to its audience.
Before exploring the characters, let's talk more about some themes of the movie. As I said before, putting cannibalism as the main focus of the film would be wrong, because Ducournau rather wanted to show the "darker sides of humanity" in the film. In her words:" You treat it [murder] with a level of humanity. But with cannibalism, no. It's too present in us. Because the animals inside our bodies can't escape. It's here, on many levels, still inside us." She later says that accepting this side of humanity is the only way we can grow up as a society. While these words may cause controversy, I think it carries certain wisdom in it.
Let's talk about some characters in the film. I'd like to start with Justine, our protagonist of 16-year-old who develops an appetite for human flesh throughout the film. In the essence, Justine symbolizes the "messy" stages of self-discovery and sexual awakening in the film. As she's left alone in a completely different environment for the first time in her life, Justine rightfully feels lost and seeks acceptance from her peers. This search eventually leads her discovering some cannibalistic tendencies in her. While in some scenes Justine can't suppress her urges, she still doesn't completely lose her human side - unlike her sister Alexia who could go as far as killing an innocent person. Now that we mentioned it, let's talk more about the character Alexia.
Alexia, Justine's sister, represents the darker side of her sister in the film. In one Q&A, Ducournau too describes Alexia as the darker shadow of Justine. While one sister ascends in terms of controlling her urge, the other descends and eventually ends up in confinement as we see at the end of the movie. When Alexia is kept in confinement in the end, it leaves the audience with a lot of questions: Is she going to drop her "tendencies"? Will this treatment ever be enough? Or maybe, most importantly, can you ever cure a tendency like that? Raw doesn't answer these questions in the end, but it sure makes the audience question some sides of humanity that is often overlooked.
Reaching the end of this post, I'm giving this movie a big 9 out of 10. I'm now looking forward to seeing Ducournau's latest feature more than ever. If you ever have the time, I'd recommend watching/reading one of Julia Ducournau's interviews about her films because the way she conveys her works in her speeches is quite magical to me.
I'd like to thank you a million for reading this far, and please don't forget to check out my Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, all with the same nickname moviesatdawn. You can also email me your suggestions to moviesatdawn@gmail.com or leave a comment below about your thoughts! Thank you so much for being here and I'll see you again in another post (this time much earlier than usual)!
Julia Ducournau:" People telling me it was nice to have a woman director because it brought softness to the industry. And I was like: 'Have you seen my movie? Did you see it? How can you say it? I'm not toilet paper. Toilet paper is soft. I'm not soft."
Comments
Post a Comment