Latest news with #JuliaDucournau
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Alpha' Review: ‘Titane' Director Julia Ducournau Adopts a More Grounded Form of Body Horror for This Dour and Dismal AIDS Allegory
Julia Ducournau has insisted that genre 'imposed a distance' on her first two features, but to watch her third — the dour and dismal 'Alpha,' which eschews the more legible body horror of her earlier work in favor of a comparatively grounded AIDS allegory — is to appreciate that genre wasn't a wedge between emotions in 'Raw' and 'Titane' so much as it was a conduit for them. Depriving herself of that same channel as she plunges headlong into the most loaded material of her career so far, Ducournau struggles to find another mode of expression that might be able to take its place. Regrettably, 'Alpha' is just a few minutes old before that struggle begins to seem futile, as the opening scenes are so helplessly adrift within a cold gray sea of unformed feeling that the rest of the film can only do its best to tread water. The only surprise is that it takes the better part of an hour for one of the characters to almost drown. More from IndieWire 'Sentimental Value' Review: Joachim Trier's Wise and Ecstatically Moving Family Portrait Searches for Intimacy Through Filmmaking Sofia Coppola Says Maude Apatow's Fandom of 'The Virgin Suicides' Proved the Lasting Legacy of the Iconic Film Ostensibly as keyed into its title character's emotional growth as the director's previous films were to their heroines' physical transformations, 'Alpha' starts with the first of its many grave mistakes. The world is overrun with a bloodborne virus that its scientists have yet to understand, and yet 13-year-old Alpha (Mélissa Boros) — for reasons that are never compellingly articulated — decides to get a massive 'A' tattooed on her arm at a Portishead-soundtracked house party where all of the kids are sharing the same dirty needle. The film's incoherent timeline will later suggest that the virus has already been ravaging France for several years by this point, which only raises more questions about Alpha's choice of body art. Was this an uncharacteristic display of rebellion, or was it the first expression of a self-destructive streak that was seeded within her as a child? Ducournau will hint at the answer in an exasperatingly roundabout manner, but it's safe to say that Alpha's motivation is of little interest to her unnamed single mother (Golshifteh Farahani), who works as a doctor at the local hospital and spends her days watching infected strangers petrify into marble-like statues as their skin hardens and their coughs emit plumes of clay sand. The virus' symptoms are meant to evoke the holiness of recumbent effigies, but most of the victims more closely resemble the guy from 'Beastly.' Will Alpha soon join their ranks? She has to wait two weeks for her test results (pour one out for Emma Mackey, flexing her French in a thankless role as the nurse who facilitates the examination), but that's an eternity for a junior high school kid who was already plenty anxious about boys before she had to deal with the possibility of turning one of them into a perfectly sculpted Alex Pettyfer look-alike. As a fellow critic mused to me after the screening: 'I don't know if we need a cool aesthetic stand-in for AIDS.' Perhaps Ducournau's case might have been more compelling if 'Alpha' had done more — or anything — to anchor the virus in something deeper than its surface-level symbolism, but the movie so consistently obfuscates the epidemic into an atemporal hodgepodge of anguish and acceptance that I soon began to question whether it was even real within the context of this story. To that point, 'Alpha' is on much firmer ground when illustrating the fear that spreads alongside the virus than it was pushing against it. Alpha's ostracization at school is, like so much in this film, diffused across a constellation of unengaging targets in the hopes that one of them might leave an impression (see: Finnegan Oldfield as a gay teacher who sticks around just long enough to recite some Edgar Allen Poe and cry), but a handful of them do. One scene in the school pool does a particularly wicked job of emphasizing Ducournau's strengths, as the director makes a visceral, bloody spectacle of Alpha's social pariah status. The girl's own fear is similarly palpable when her uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim) shows up in her apartment after an eight-year absence. Hunched, jittery, and deep in the depths of heroin withdrawal, Amin's unannounced presence terrifies his niece, who doesn't remember using a marker to connect the dots between the track marks on his arm when she was little. As Alpha begins to suspect that she's dying of the virus, her paranoia starts to mirror the symptoms of Amin's drug use, though Ducournau — in pursuit of a pure feeling that she can't pin down — mostly chooses to illustrate this kinship through a series of flashbacks to Alpha's childhood. Clear enough at first, and then increasingly unstuck in space-time to a degree that undercuts the film's emotional primacy, these glimpses into the past give Rahim a chance to do more than just be a warm presence and writhe around in pain, but conflating his drug use with the effects of the virus dulls any interest in them both. While bouncier hair and a slightly brighter color scheme help to distinguish between the story's then and now, the difference is only so noticeable in a drama this sterile and desaturated; a film that conveys its reactionary self-isolation through the drabness of a Roy Andersson comedy, but feels like it's had the life sucked out of even its most 'joyous' moments (only an unhelpful montage soundtracked to 'The Mercy Seat' by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds manages to qualify for that category). The slipstream of it all is slippery enough to suggest that Ducournau's nightmare might in fact be 'a dream within a dream,' but the director's efforts to snap out of it and rage against the moral conservatism the virus has inspired only serve to emphasize the film's disconnection from itself. Who is Alpha, beyond a self-destructive kid who wants to break free from her mother, and how does the generational trauma she's inherited from her immigrant grandmother — a trauma vaguely tinged by the difficulties of assimilation — allow the virus to serve as a cure for the fear that it breeds? It's hard to say, and even harder to hear, as Boros and Farahani alike are both lost beneath the film's booming electronic score whenever they aren't being smothered by mix-and-match dialogue about love and abandonment. 'This family doesn't do boundaries,' Amin says at one point, and 'Alpha' is so eager to weaponize that tendency against a world that's become afraid of itself that Ducournau effectively blurs all of her ideas into a flavorless sludge. Indeed, the movie only comes alive when it leans into the heightened sort of spectacle that Ducournau regards as an impediment, as it does in the vividly expressive scene where a character's spine crumbles into a pillar of sand, and in a final sequence that — at long last — offers a meaningful illustration of the hurt that these characters have been holding for so long instead of each other. Somehow overwrought and undercooked all at once, 'Alpha' doesn't have the slightest grip on what it means to be 13 years old in a world that's storming with tragedy on all sides, but Ducournau implicitly understands that no one is ever old enough to bear the burdens unto which they are born. The maddening frustration of her first unambiguous misfire — which is worse than bad because it could have been good — is that it feels so much, but conveys so little. 'Alpha' premiered in Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. NEON will release it in theaters this October. 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Vogue
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
All the Winners at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
The 2025 Cannes Film Festival saw a flurry of splashy releases debut on the Croisette—some from beloved auteurs who have already scooped the prestigious Palme d'Or in previous years (Julia Ducournau, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) and others from those hoping to take it home for the very first time. Then, there were also a number of headline-grabbing performances, from the likes of Die My Love's Jennifer Lawrence, The History of Sound's Paul Mescal, The Secret Agent's Wagner Moura, and Sentimental Value's Renate Reinsve, which were in contention for prizes, too—with wins here likely to give hopefuls a significant boost ahead of 2026's awards season. Considering that last year's Palme d'Or winner, Anora, went on to collect the best-picture Oscar, as well as the fact that three 2024 prize winners (Sean Baker and Emilia Pérez's Jacques Audiard and Zoe Saldaña) secured statuettes, and three others (Karla Sofía Gascón, The Seed of the Sacred Fig's Mohammad Rasoulof, and The Substance's Coralie Fargeat) received nominations, the stakes were very high indeed. If that wasn't enough, the final day of the 78th edition of the French Riviera showcase got off to a bumpy start, too, with a mass power outage across the region, which brought almost everything to a halt. Luckily, though, the lights stayed on inside Cannes's Palais des Festivals thanks to a generator, which allowed screenings and press conferences to go ahead as planned, and electricity returned just in time for the closing ceremony. Could its results match the chaos of everything that had come before it? To an extent, yes, with several big surprises. Below, see all the winners from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. In Competition Palme d'Or: Jafar Panahi for It Was Just an Accident Grand Prix: Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value Jury Prize: Oliver Laxe for Sirât and Mascha Schilinski for Sound of Falling Best Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho for The Secret Agent Best Screenplay: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for Young Mothers Best Actress: Nadia Melliti for The Little Sister Best Actor: Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Falling palm trees and a faltering Palme d'Or director: how Cannes 2025 went – and who will win
Cannes this year had a lot to live up to after last year's award-winners, headline-grabbers and social media meltdowners Anora, The Substance and Emilia Pérez. It makes reading the signs now that bit more difficult: the bizarre event on the Croisette boulevard this year was a palm tree falling over. If it happened in a film, the metaphor would be unbearable. Whether 2025's Cannes movies are going to spark a new burst of overwhelming excitement remains to be seen, though this year's vintage feels good – often excellent, although even the biggest names can get it wrong: former Palme d'Or winner Julia Ducournau presented an incoherent drama called Alpha. This was a Cannes competition whose great movies were about political cruelty and tyranny. Jafar Panahi's A Simple Accident was about a fortuitous event that unearthed horrifying memories in Iran. Kleber Mendonça Filho's glorious, sprawling, Elmore Leonard-esque film from Brazil, The Secret Agent was about the 1970s dictatorship – interestingly, both films showed petty officials taking bribes. Filho's wretched cops are bought off with some cigarettes – Panahi's crooked security guards carry a debit card reader so they can take contactless payments. But for sheer existential grandeur of evil nothing could touch Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors – about the Stalin 30s, with its Dostoyevskian and Kafkaesque moments of despair. And to go with these views of the patriarchy, there were daddy issues. Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value showed Stellan Skarsgård being insufferable with his daughters – the preening Egyptian movie star played by Fares Fares in Eagles of the Republic infuriates his son, and Josh O'Connor's hapless art thief in Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind is a very neglectful dad. And in the Dardenne brothers' compassionate and poignant movie Jeunes Mères, about a care facility for teenage mothers, the fathers were conspicuous by their absence. So here are my prize predictions, followed by my extra Cannes Braddies, my personal awards in other sections which should exist, but don' d'Or The Secret Agent (dir Kleber Mendonça Filho)Grand Prix Two Prosecutors (dir Sergei Loznitsa)Jury prize A Simple Accident (dir Jafar Panahi)Best director Carla Simón for RomeríaBest screenplay Mascha Schilinski for Sound of FallingBest actor Josh O'Connor for The MastermindBest actress Yui Suzuki for Renoir (dir Chie Hayakawa)Braddies for prize categories that don't exist but shouldBest supporting actor Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value (dir Joachim Trier)Best supporting actress Tânia Maria for The Secret Agent (dir Kleber Mendonça Filho)Cinematography David Chambille for Nouvelle Vague (dir Richard Linklater)Production design Roger Rosenberg for Eagles of the Republic (dir Tarik Saleh)
Metro
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Alpha review - I'm defending gruelling French body horror that inspired walkouts
There's been a surprising amount of backlash to one of the front-runners at Cannes this year for the festival's top prize – but I liked Alpha. The divisive movie, which inspired some walkouts this year, is the latest from French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, known for her boundary-pushing work in the body horror space with the likes of Raw and Titane. I must admit that I felt really uncomfortable watching it – but that, to me, was the point of the film. Alpha is gruelling but also thought-provoking, set in an alternate version of the recent past where society exists under the shadow of a deadly blood-borne disease which slowly turns those suffering with it into marble. That's the expected body horror element of the movie, which is often weird and unsettling, although things do move more into coming-of-age drama territory thanks to Alpha's genre-bending. The film follows the titular Alpha (a stunningly raw Mélissa Boris), a troubled 13-year-old who comes home from a party with an 'A' tattooed on her arm. Her mother (Golshifteh Farahani) frantically questions her about the needle used as it's revealed she is a doctor working at an overstretched hospital, struggling to cope with the onslaught of patients succumbing to this suffocating sickness. The movie is a clear, pretty unsubtle, AIDS epidemic allegory, especially with how Alpha is shunned at school by her classmates, who are terrified of her blood – although it also rings true of Covid in more recent years with its familiar panic and scenes of crowded hospital rooms. There's also a hacking cough to boot, as those affected by this unnamed affliction cough up dust. Rampant homophobia is also on display in a literature class run by Alpha's English teacher (Finnegan Oldfield), who is later revealed to be in a relationship with a man dying of the disease. Alpha is more pared back than past Durcournau films in terms of its grotesque body horror, but it's still present and used to wince-inducing effect – just in smaller doses. In one horrific scene in particular, I almost gagged as one victim of the virus was shown in agony, body splintering. Another grim moment is the swab of a mouth, filmed in unpleasant detail. These sorts of shots are interspersed throughout the film, but Ducournau's focus is much more on making you feel the emotional drama as a priority over generating still-visceral physical reactions. But this film is not as taboo breaking as her previous work, centering instead on the sometimes fraught relationship between Alpha and her mother, which is put under further strain when her junkie uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim) moves back in. Alpha was previously left in his care as a young girl when he overdosed, something he does consistently throughout the film, always being brought back to life by his determined sister. While she cut off contact with him due to the incident when Alpha was younger, she seems surprisingly fine with it now. Another slightly confusing element is the matter of the mysterious red dust coating the outside world – something Alpha's grandmother is worried by, but is oddly never commented upon by anyone else or linked to the disease. Is it the remains of those statue-like victims once they disintegrate? Or is it just to offer another element to the apocalyptic vibes of the film? However, the urgent mood which Ducournau and her actors set – including Emma Mackey as a nurse colleague of Alpha's mother – allowed me to not become distracted by the slightly vague aspects of the film, concentrating instead on the deep emotion it provoked. For those not in Alpha's thrall, there were a few walkouts in my screening. It is a slow-moving and quite taxing film, but I didn't feel that it obviously lacked pace – rather that Ducournau was allowing space for her actors and story to breathe over its 128-minute runtime. And I am usually one of the first to mentally unsheathe my scissors for some chopping down of movies. It's also likely that many were caught off-guard by Durcournau's change of direction following her Palme D'Or success with Titane at Cannes in 2021. More Trending And while many critics haven't been kind to Alpha with their reviews out of Cannes, it did receive one of the festival's longer standing ovations this year, clocking in at a none-too-shabby 12 minutes. But I was engaged throughout – and the mesmerising acting made this a really impactful film that has stayed with me. Alpha premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. It is yet to receive a UK release date. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: The real story behind those '20-minute standing ovations' at Cannes Film Festival MORE: Paul Mescal rejects 'lazy and frustrating' Brokeback Mountain comparisons to new gay film MORE: The 'must-watch' film of 2025 just received a 19-minute standing ovation at Cannes
New York Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Cannes, Can You Trust the Length of a Standing Ovation?
For decades, the Palme d'Or was the most prestigious award that the Cannes Film Festival could bestow. But there's a new honor that many films appear to be vying for: Which movie can earn the longest standing ovation? The ovations here have always been supersized, but in recent years, industry outlets like Deadline, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have turned the duration of the applause into a competitive spectacle. Headlines crow that 'The History of Sound' (starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor) earned a nine-minute ovation, 'Alpha' (Julia Ducournau's follow-up to 'Titane') was applauded for 12 minutes, and 'Sentimental Value' (from Joachim Trier) earned a stunning 19-minute ovation. A Palme pecking order is then heavily implied. As someone who covers Oscar season, I understand the temptation to turn artistic achievements into a horse race. Still, when it comes to the way these standing ovations are reported, appearances can be deceiving. First, some background. After a film's closing credits conclude at Cannes, a camera is trained on the cast and director, broadcasting their reactions on the huge screen in the Grand Théâtre Lumière. It's customary for the camera operator to isolate each actor in close-up for individual moments of applause, meaning that larger ensembles often garner the longest ovations. If the actors are then willing to interact with each other and reshuffle into new pairings, the ovation can be especially prolonged. But it's important to note that the director has the option to end things at any point by giving a speech, and some filmmakers, like Bong Joon Ho and Wes Anderson, are uncomfortable letting the adulation go on for too long. When 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' premiered at Cannes last week, the applause only stopped because the director Christopher McQuarrie grabbed a mic, paid tribute to his cast, then led them out of the theater. (If he had instead prodded Tom Cruise to climb the rafters of the Lumière, we could have been looking at a record-breaking ovation.) Media outlets differ on whether to include the length of the director's speech as part of the ovation, which is why you often see conflicting reports on the final total. For example, though Variety claimed the 'Mission: Impossible' applause lasted five minutes, Deadline reported that the ovation went on for seven and a half. And should the applause that begins over the end credits count, even if no one is technically standing yet? I've sat next to the reporters who time these ovations, and there appears to be no formal consensus as to how it should work. Ultimately, with a system that can so easily be exploited, the length of a standing ovation often boils down to one question: How much is the talent willing to milk it? Take last year's 'Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1,' a western that was written, directed, produced and partly financed by its star, Kevin Costner. As you might imagine by the amount of times his name appeared in the credits, Costner was happy to bask in the applause after the premiere, drawing an 11-minute ovation from the crowd that belied the film's mixed reviews. With a festival as over the top as Cannes, it's easy to get swept up in the emotion of a standing ovation: After the Tuesday premiere of Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, 'Eleanor the Great,' it was moving to see minutes of applause for the film's 95-year-old star, June Squibb. Still, it's worth being skeptical of the reporting that accompanies those ovations. At Cannes, applause isn't just earned — in many ways, it's engineered.
