Julia Ducournau
Raw - Una cruda verità

Cover their faces in blood, as Douglas Pierce used to sing.

Julia Ducournau, a French director now in her forties - a true Millennial -, released her first work as a young independent filmmaker in 2017, introducing herself to the world as an auteur of nonconformist and unconventional cinema, radical in her own way, not without noble predecessors to draw inspiration from. Chiefly among them, of course, is David Cronenberg: the greatest among modern scholars of physical and bodily transformation in relation to social and technological changes, but also to the deepest and most hidden traumas of the psyche. The study that Cronenberg has been conducting through images for half a century poses distressing questions and apocalyptic conclusions, without reassurances, without salvation. Pessimistic and deeply dark conclusions, considering the crimes of the future which are, in reality, the setting of our present.

Julia Ducournau today continues, in her own way, some of the reflections initiated by Cronenberg, obviously tailored to her personal vision, experience, and sensitivity.

Raw

The flesh, the blood, the sex.

Where the drive and hunger cannot be repressed.

The Cronenbergian mutation here becomes a metaphor for the discovery of self and sexuality. Raw is among the most interesting and extreme recent coming-of-age films.

A few months after Ducournau's debut, another director of her age, now much more famous, namely Greta Gerwig, made her debut with a coming-of-age film that became a cult, Lady Bird. It could be said that, given the similar high school context, Raw represents its dark and sick side, compared to the sweeter and bitter style of the director of Little Women and Barbie. On the other hand, Gerwig is a daughter of provincial Catholic America, Ducournau of the French capital; quite a different cultural climate.

Besides Cronenberg, another influence can be seen in Raw, which, in fact, embraces the same reflection/allegory that was, though in a totally different context, theorized by Claire Denis in Cannibal Love (Trouble Everyday). Carnality, desire, and voracity, all taken to extreme consequences.

The first work of the French director, who would later receive one of the most controversial and debated (but also courageous) Palmes d'Or ever with Titane - speaking of debts to Cronenberg -, is a peculiar and occasionally disturbing work, less daring and outlandish than her subsequent film, but also overall more successful and accomplished.