This exhilarating French-Belgian debut from writer/director Julia Ducournau is a feast for ravenous cinephiles, an extreme yet intimate tale of identity crises that blends Cronenbergian body horror with humour and heartbreak as it sinks its teeth deep into the sins of the flesh.
When a young woman arrives at veterinary college, her primary desire is to fit in, to follow in the footsteps of a proud family tradition. But when rookie hazing rituals force her to taste forbidden fruit (specifically, raw rabbit liver), the devout vegetarian discovers previously suppressed appetites. One minute she’s a strait-laced, straight-A student, the next she’s drooling at the sight of a freshly severed finger and lusting after the tempting torso of her muscular room-mate. What follows is a cross between Claire Denis’s taboo-breaking Euro-shocker Trouble Every Day and the deadpan cannibal drama We Are What We Are (both Jorge Michel Grau’s Mexican original and Jim Mickle’s US remake). Described by the director as “a modern ancient tragedy about too much love”, Raw is a gleefully Grimm 21st-century fairytale, subversively told from within the walls of a brutalist gingerbread house.
Garance Marillier (star of Ducournau’s 2011 short Junior) is electrifying as Justine, the waif-like new student whose name evokes the novel by the Marquis de Sade and whom we first meet spitting out a slice of sausage mistakenly served in a roadside cafe. Dropped at the same vet school attended previously by her parents (Laurent Lucas and Joana Preiss) and now by her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf), Justine soon finds herself showered in blood, part of an initiation ceremony that teasingly evokes the climax from Carrie.
Like the heroine of Stephen King’s tale, Raw’s virginal Justine is alienated from her peers, struggling with the enforced debauchery (less Animal House than Dawn of the Dead) that finds students crawling like dogs, drinking like fish and mating like rabbits. But when a blue-painted Justine is thrown into a room with a yellow-splattered boy and told: “Don’t come out until you’re both green”, it’s the startling splash of red on his face that reveals her true character, a character Alexia acknowledges with a knowing tear.
Directed with the same cross-genre dexterity as Kathryn Bigelow’s seminal vampire western Near Dark, Raw is a thrillingly confident and vigorously executed work. From the chilling opening shot of a car crash to the woozy, single-take sojourns through drunken student raves, Ducournau and cinematographer Ruben Impens lead us effortlessly into Justine’s underworld. A tethered horse on a treadmill canters in slow motion through Justine’s tortured dreams, while scratching fits and metamorphosing sweats are captured from within the claustrophobic confines of imprisoning bed-sheets.
There’s biting humour, too. When Justine is overheard regurgitating locks of her own hair, a smiling student mistakes it for something altogether more common, but no less monstrous. “You’d better not be anorexic,” scolds partner-in-crime Alexia. “That’s gross!” Amid the smorgasbord of carnage, the most wince-inducing moment comes during a skin-peeling bikini wax. Later, when the girls fight like pitbulls, their classmates react by pulling out their mobile phones before pulling them apart.
Musically, Ducournau matches A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night director Ana Lily Amirpour’s ear for a perfectly chosen jukebox selection. A scene in which Justine seduces her mirror image to the punkily provocative Plus Putes que toutes les Putes, by twin-sisters band Orties, is as weirdly arresting as Harvey Keitel’s drunken Rubber Biscuit segment from Scorsese’s Mean Streets. Meanwhile, composer Jim Williams accompanies the move from childish innocence to carnivorous maturity by shifting from gently plucked nursery-rhyme themes to spiralling 70s-inflected gothic organs.
Along with a formative encounter with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the age of six, it’s no surprise that Ducournau cites Carlos Saura’s kaleidoscopic Cria Cuervos as an inspirational text, nor that Spanish chanteuse Jeanette’s hauntingly jaunty Por qué te vas provided the soundtrack to her youth. For all its knee-weakening gore (from animal dissections to human desire), Raw remains touchingly tender, mixing blood and water as sisters embrace, while Mum and Dad put a brave face on the scars of the past.
“An animal that has tasted human flesh is not safe,” Lucas’s stoical père tells his daughter. He’s speaking of a beloved family pet, but could just as easily be describing his own brood. As for Ducournau, she has tasted victory with her first feature: it scooped prestigious prizes at festivals in Sitges, Cannes and London. I have no doubt that far greater accolades await this brilliant film-maker. The world is her oyster. Watch her swallow it whole.
