Julia ducournau body12/31/2023 ![]() But soon enough, she finds that the tiny nibble of animal flesh stirs something primal in her-a hunger she never realized was there. She’s initially resistant and repulsed, as anyone would be. In one of them, the older students force her and her classmates each to eat a small piece of raw rabbit kidney. It’s an unusual and unsettling location for a film.Įveryone in Justine’s family is not only a veterinarian but also a strict vegetarian, a lifestyle choice she finds difficult to adhere to when confronted with a series of raucous and sadistic freshman hazing rituals. This is a prestigious institution, but the campus itself is especially bleak and unwelcoming during the rare instances when these aspiring doctors get to go outside, the skies always seem to be cloudy. “Raw” begins on a note of understated tension as 16-year-old Justine ( Garance Marillier with a thrilling, daring performance in her first major role) travels to veterinary school with her parents, where they both studied and where her brash older sister, Alexia ( Ella Rumpf), is currently a student. With the help of cinematographer Ruben Impens’ beautifully nightmarish use of color and light and Jim Williams’ chilling score, Ducournau creates a lingering sense of mystery throughout: How much of this is a hallucination? Could what we’re watching possibly be real? She knows when to hold back to create suspense and when to unleash the full fury of her grisly imagery. (The recent “ XX,” which consisted of four horror shorts by and about women, also entered this territory, but with frustratingly inconsistent results.) Ducournau mixes it up visually with a combination of eerily austere establishing shots and long, fluid camera movements. Having said that, it’s exciting to see a female filmmaker establishing herself so forcefully in what traditionally has been a male-dominated genre. That’s what’s so startling about the film: It’s not necessarily the monstrous moments that’ll shake you up, but rather the mundane ones. Ducournau pinpoints and expertly depicts the frights that exist in the everyday world-especially when you’re a young woman trying to figure out your place within it. “Raw” will make you curl up in a ball in your seat, daring to watch through splayed fingers-and not necessarily in response to the film’s violence. And though it has glimmers of style that are reminiscent of thriller masters-the body horror of David Cronenberg, the gaudy surrealism of David Lynch-“Raw” is very much its own artful entity with its own singular voice. Ducournau’s lurid, vivid film is visually striking, full of images that will shock you while others will lull you with a hypnotic beauty. ![]()
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