Director Julia Ducournau has become
synonymous with the “feminist body horror” genre. By pioneering the idea of the
horrors of femininity, without the loss of agency and autonomy for her subjects,
has elevated Ducournau as a premiere auteur of indie filmmaking. Each of her
three films to date have pushed the boundaries of expectation, understanding
and taste. Boundary breaking, and at times, culturally caustic, Ducournau’s
filmography challenges cinephiles through a lack of narrative conventions and a
simultaneous allegorical richness, which requires repeat viewing. Whether her subjects
be a vegetarian vet with a penchant for cannibalism, a nonbinary, gender-fluid
serial killer with objectophilia for automobiles, or a self-destructive teen during
a postapocalyptic future brought on by a pandemic with statuesque virulence,
there is absurdity, and an unconventional construction of tone, plot and
character to Ducournau’s films that is as refreshing as it is grotesque. Therefore,
Julia Ducournau is the subject of my next director series that is sure to push
the boundaries of conventional cinematic language into something beyond.
BREIF BACKGROUND
Birthed
from a gynecologist mother and a dermatologist father, on November 18th
1983, it is unsurprising that Julia Ducournau’s filmmaking trajectory is both
within and guided by the body horror subgenre. While not “in her blood” as many
who would use a biologically deterministic argument to explain how the award-winning
director got her initial inspiration, it stands to sociologically reason that her
parent’s careers, through the process of socialization, would have an indelible
impact on their daughter. Given Ducournau’s films, the similarities between
what is often the film’s subject and the expertise of her parents, there is
little denying their influence. Ducournau cites their candid and direct
discussions about the body and death led her to be fascinated with the flesh, consciousness,
and the way that the body could be manipulated. This fascination became
crystalized when Ducournau went to film school.
Studying
film and screenwriting at the prestigious La Femis, Durcournau’s auteristic
tenure has been met with wide acclaim and critical success. The second female
(cis or trans) to win the directing Palme d’Or at the CANNES film festival
(behind Jane Campion for The Piano) her work has been described as
revelatory, uncompromising, thrillingly provocative, with visuals that many
find disturbingly erotic. Durcournau’s richly sparse trilogy of films has
always been something to watch. Given the general acceptance of her films by cinephile
critics, Durcournau’s latest venture, Alpha, has become one of the more anticipated films
screened at Cannes in 2025,
to the point of myths arising around the film that are akin to Freidkin’s The Exorcist. Yet, as of this writing, early
reviews out of the festival seem to be the harbinger of mediocrity for Ducournau;
the most scathing coming from artistically anarchic auteur apologist and cinephile
champion critic David Ehrlich of Indiewire calling the film both “dour and dismal”. Thus, with her most recent feature,
Ducournau may be beginning to experience the missteps and disparagement that inevitably
accompanies artistic expression.
Ducournau’s inspirations have been cited as Lynchingly
Cronenbergian with a sprinkling of Shelly and Poe. Ducournau uses both a
command of the camera, including an eclectic series of shots, techniques and
storyboards to crystalize this amalgamistic aesthetic of tone and style. The body horror aspects of Ducournau’s feature
length directorial triptych: Raw, Titane, and Alpha, can easily be
laid at the feet of early Cronenberg (VideoDrome, The Fly) while the twisting
reveals, and often radical shifts in composition, lighting, narrative and tone
are positively Lynchian; specifically, The Elephant Man. Because of these influences, Ducournau’s films
are difficult to describe, but easy to spot, given the audience reactions to
them out of context. “She ate him?” (Raw) “Did she just fuck a car?” (Titane) “Is
she turning to stone?” (Alpha). Allegorically artistic, Ducournau channels those
influences into a consistent expression of the horrors of the female body.
THEMES
In looking at Ducournau’s brief filmography there is a
level of thematic consistency in her work. Coming from a desire to make genre
films that blossom from reality, Ducournau understands that we draw from the
world around us for inspiration and to say something about our everyday lives.
However, she has also indicated that her films should not be pigeonholed into a
political
pamphlet.
This
apolitical stance of filmmakers is common. It is often born out of a desire to
maximize revenue and profit the most off of their art by a reluctance to produce
anything that would be perceived as politically polarizing, or more
artistically, allows the audience the freedom to interpret the filmmaker’s art
independently, in their own way. This is understandable, even refreshing, but
ultimately impossible, and often perceived as a cop out. Because film is a social
and cultural product, it reflects both the time-period and the individuals that
the film is telling stories about. This relatability is key. So, that even films
set in the most fantastical world can still say something about the world we live
in today. The personal is political, as
film is socio-cultural, regardless of the filmmaker’s economic or artistic
intensions. Thus, if a socio-cultural and political stance is going to be presumably
applied to the film anyway, filmmakers should make their intensions known, so
that they are not misconstrued and their art is not misinterpreted and used in
ways that do not align with the artist’s beliefs. However, intension is not a requirement
for thematic embodiment, as with Ducournau’s filmography, there is an audience
projection of themes that are present when consuming her art; specifically, those
of feminism and body autonomy.
Feminism and body autonomy
One of the many struggles that female
directors face, in addition to the consistent misogyny brought on by the
historical patriarchal exclusion and invisibility of women in such a creative
and authoritative position, is the assumption that everything that director produces
is perceived as feminist. A person’s genitalia, their sex assignment at birth,
or their gender identity should never assume a political ideology, even as one
as generalized and tepid as equity and equality for all women. Yet, unfortunately,
anything a female director produces, there are attempts to politically
commodify it and use their work to make a broader point[1], regardless of if it fits.
Ducournau’s trilogy of films,
carries with it a clear fascination and understanding of the female body. In an
interview with The
Independent, Ducournau has stated that women “… have to accept some parts of us that are hard
to watch, hard to acknowledge because it’s in us, because it’s scary.”. For her,
from the embrace of the monstrous can result in emancipatory liberation, whether
that be through cannibalism, objectophelic gender fluidity, or statuesque
virulence. This is because of the contrast of the female monstrous body in
comparison to its often-misogynistic sexualization, and a deification of the
female body through the process of childbirth often projects a reference for
the female body that has been mythologized. For Ducournau, by rejecting this understanding
of the female body is to also reject a heavenly invoked gilded cage of
patriarchy’s design. Instead, by embracing the utility and practicality of
female bodies we can see their central power that is often obfuscated by the soft
aesthetic that is applied to them. Ducournau’s films tear away at that façade
and embraces the grimy grotesqueries of girlhood as their emotional prism of empowerment
outside of the patriarchal structures that seek to control them.
Because of Ducournau’s focus on depicting
the often-literal deconstruction of the female body, much of the forthcoming
analysis will be pulled from many post structural philosophers, feminists and sociological
scholars. The central works of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva,
bell hooks, and Nancy Frasier may be used or make an appearance in the reference
list of each film’s criticism. The link between body and identity, their mutual
transformation and expression that Ducournau depicts on screen, shall be peered
through this academic lens.
CONCLUSION
The
modern body horror genre would not be as rich and vibrant without the work of Julia Ducournau. She challenges the way that we see and understand
the female form. Through the embrace of the grotesque and its application to
the female body, we can help to break out of the cultural misogyny of the near innate
sexualization that objectifies and strips girls from the transformative power
that they hold within themselves.
