Halloween 2021: The Feminine Body Horror of Julia Ducournau
Wild bunch/Focus WorldThe following article ccntains spoilers for Junior, Raw, and Titane
Contemporary horror cinema has seen many filmmakers either go for cheap thrills and fluff entertainment – think of the endless onslaught of found-footage films – or “elevated horror” that focuses so much on the themes that it oftentimes forgets to be a horror film – such as It Comes at Night or Saint Maud, for better or worse. There is, however, one up-and-coming director who, with just two features under her belt, has managed to make a name for herself: Julia Ducournau.
Julia Ducournau studied screenwriting at La Fémis in Paris, one of the most acclaimed international film schools in the world. She grew up in France during one of the most controversial cinematic periods, the New French Extremity: a series of horror films that pushed the boundaries of what was presentable in a film in terms of violence and gore. This extremism, blended with Ducournau’s passion for the works of David Cronenberg and Greek mythology, giving birth to a truly unique style of filmmaking.
Linking Ducournau to Cronenberg is obvious yet unavoidable: the Canadian director has become a true icon of body horror through a long series of films that were among the boldest from the ‘80s and ‘90s. The DNA of works like Rabid, Videodrome, and Crash is certainly present in the works of that young director. Cronenberg explored the human body through a clinical and cynical lens, where horrid mutations and disfigurements closely mirror disgusting reactions that happen involuntarily in people. He lingers on this nasty imagery to comment on the cold detachment of humans, gravitating toward soulless objects and virtual worlds, with little to nothing positive coming from the arrival of “the new flesh”.
There is a definite sense of eroticism that Cronenberg finds in his portrayal of bodies and sexual relations between a man and a woman, but it is seldom titillating or emotional. Consider The Brood, with its external womb and grotesque birth sequence: the female body is both mysterious and disgusting, the opposite of appealing and seductive. Horror in general, even outside of this subgenre, tends to portray both womanhood and motherhood as scary: The Babadook, Carrie, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Teeth, and many more feature women as victims or villains – sometimes both. While there are definitely attempts at breaking gender barriers through these films, it is hard to deny that, more often than not, they perpetuate patriarchal and reductive views on who a woman should be.
These issues of gender identity are key in analysing and exploring the works of Julia Ducournau. Her first short film, Junior, successfully premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, netting her the Petit Rail d’Or for Best Short. The story is more of a dark fantasy where young Justine (played by Garance Marillier) experiences a disturbing metamorphosis, peeling layers of skin off her body and releasing gooey fluids. However, rather than turning into Brundlefly or a disgusting creature, she morphs into a pretty, average teenager.
Ducournau utilises the grammar of body horror to depict the confusing stage of life that is puberty. The way a young kid’s body changes, especially that of a woman, is quite frightening, but Junior shows that, as painful and sudden as it may be, the transformation should not be feared. It is rather empowering for young girls to see someone comfort them without shying away from how baffling seeing their own body grow can be.
If Junior is about entering puberty, then Ducournau’s first feature film, Raw, is about leaving it through a sexual awakening. What better way of looking at this rebirth than through a vegetarian vet school student who becomes a cannibal after tasting meat for the first time in her life. Garance Marillier comes back playing another Justine. The repetition of the name is not accidental: Ducournau has stated that she sees her films and characters as constantly evolving without necessarily being related to one another, and the way they change through each film is the same way people change over the years.
Justine is a girl that very much wants to be average, blending into crowds without attracting unwanted attention. The college she attends is a place brimming with lust, sex, and meat – something she was sheltered from by her over-protective parents her whole life. The best way to help a teenager mature is to teach them about the world and their bodies, and the way Justine was brought up made it so that her descent into eating raw meat and human appendices is completely inebriating and uncontrollable. The relationship between Justine and her older sister Alexia – who is also attending the school – is the heart of the movie, and the discovery that Alexia herself is a more disciplined cannibal is nowhere near as shocking as the final revelation: that Justine’s mother enjoys anthropophagy as well, with her husband revealing bites and wounds over his body.
As cliched as it may sound, Raw is about love. Love in a physical, animalistic sense – what triggers Justine’s awakening – but also familial love, where loving someone means to accept their flaws and stay with them no matter what. Justine’s parents managed to find that balance in their life, but they were so afraid that their daughters would be unable to that they kept their natural instincts hidden, which only leads to repression, frustration, and ultimately an explosion. People cannot escape who they are, and this film is a strong reminder of that.
Ducournau’s sophomore effort, the Palm d’Or winning Titane, pushes these themes even further. Raw shows the importance of blood ties and strong bonds inside families, while Titane presents a family that is chosen. As a result of a car accident, young Alexia required a plate of titanium inserted in her skull to stay alive. This piece of cold metal is not as cold as her father’s disinterest in her, likely blaming her for the accident even though he was the one driving. This emotional detachment leads the girl to grow into a woman (Agathe Rousselle) who works as an erotic dancer at a car show, unable to craft any emotional ties with others, managing to only find pleasure from having intercourse with a car.
Alexia is also a serial killer, likely only attacking those who harass her after her shows, given her casual demeanour in stabbing a man in his ear. Death and sex, pain and pleasure are closely interlinked for her, and she finds an uneven balance in her life. Discovering that the car impregnated her turns her world upside down, losing control of everything she was holding close, leading her into a murder spree that culminates in burning her family’s house while her parents are asleep.
The way the opening dance sequence is shot is purposefully tasteless and sensual, a long take from the perspective of the male gaze, lingering on the bodies of these women just like many popular music videos do. Alexia is emotionless and distant, and the objectifying camerawork does not distinguish her from the frigid steel she is humping. Only the revelation of the pregnancy manages to make her feel something: fear. The relatability of feeling the world crumbling down links the audience to Alexia, which makes her choice to pretend to be Adrien, the long-lost son of a fireman chief (Vincent, played by Vincent Lindon), feel like the desperate attempt it is, necessary for survival.
What neither Alexia nor Vincent expect is that the two of them really need one another. Vincent is bulky and strong, injecting daily doses of steroids in his bottom to try and live up to the expectations of who a man should be. When he is training, he becomes frustrated and upset with the way his body is aging. Getting back his son through Alexia, as weird as she may act, gives him enough hope to keep going and it helps him loosen up. In a final attempt to keep Alexia/Adrien from leaving him, he puts on The Zombies’ ‘She’s Not There’ – an ironic choice – and starts dancing. The way he moves feels natural, his smile a genuine one. His dance becomes more aggressive as the song goes on, bumping into Alexia/Adrien to get any sort of reaction from them, as if he were trying to get the man out of his son.
This scene is mirrored later on in the film, once Alexia embraces her role as Adrien and stays with Vincent, helping him out and comforting each other in a way that she never experienced with her real parents. Even though Vincent is not fully delusional and after a while realises that Alexia is not really Adrien, he does not care. Their co-dependent relationship is true love and seeing the two of them dance among the other firemen in a moment with strong homoerotic undertones is completely breaking gender conformity: Alexia is at home in Adrien’s shoes, and Vincent feels great when dancing slowly and sensually. Like in the films of Claire Denis, dancing is freedom, the ultimate expression of one’s true self, and this scene shows that completely.
But this is a Julia Ducournau film, and the body horror does not stay confined in the first bloody 20 minutes of Titane: Alexia’s pregnancy is coming to a close. The film starts with death, but it ends in birth. Vincent helps Alexia through the grease-filled act just like a real father, then cradling the new-born just like a mother. The girl has bled to death, but the ending is optimistic: the birth of this human-car hybrid is a positive one, representing the hope for a future of uniqueness and acceptance. Both Alexia and Vincent were victims of a masculine, patriarchal, gender-conforming society that was less interested in true connections and embracing one’s own identity. This baby can change all that, the true “new flesh” that Cronenberg talked about in Videodrome.
Who knows what the future will hold for Julia Ducournau, whether she will continue to work in the realm of horror and fantasy. With just three films – excluding a made-for-TV collaborative effort from 2012, Mange – she has successfully subverted the expectations of body horror, showing the changes and transformations of women as a harbinger of positive change, where gender and sexuality can be fluid, and love truly controls everything.