For today's Female Filmmakers let's look at a star on the rise. She has only directed a handful of movies, but one of those films is considered one of the best movies of the 2010s. Let's talk about the fierce French director, Julia Ducournau.
Julia comes to us from Paris where she studied screenwriting at La Femis. She began her career in 2011 when she made her first film, a short flick called Junior. The plot of Junior is about a girl who gets a stomach bug that makes her shed her skin. The shocking short film was shown at Cannes Film Festival in 2011 where is won the Petit Rail d'Or, showing that she immediately had promise.
Mange was her next big project which she co-directed in 2012, but she made her name known to the world with her shocking 2016 feature film debut: Raw.
That's right! Julia is the one responsible for Raw, the bloody horror film that has had everyone talking for years. It's the film that handed out vomit bags during its Los Angeles run at the Nuart Theatre. People fainted and barfed. It was one of the most shocking films in the past ten years.
That's fair because Raw took her five years to work on. Julie has said that she does not consider this film a horror movie. It's literally about cannibalism...what does she think this is? A romantic comedy??? She has said that she did not intend to scare audiences, just to disturb them, in this coming-of-age story.
Raw is a horror story about a woman who is in school studying to become a vet. She is a sweet, gentle, freshman who is also a practicing vegetarian. She is new at this school and willing to do whatever she has to fit in, including some weird hazing rituals. One of those rituals includes eating raw rabbit kidneys. She doesn't want to, but her older sister who goes to the school already forces her to do it.
She soon develops a rash and the rash is followed by a peculiar craving. What is it that she craves? Human meat. Oh, yes. It's a teenaged cannibal movie!
Garance Marillier is stunning as the leading lady, Justine. Ella Rumpf and Joana Preiss also star. Ella plays Garance's older sister, a bully who already attends the vet school and already knows about this taste for flesh. You might develop a taste for both of these babes after watching them go nude!
Is she really eating raw meat?! No, the "meat" is actually sugar. Garance has stated that nothing in the movie made her disgusted by meat, but eating these props made out of sugar made her feel disgusted by candy after the film. That's too bad. There is nothing to be disgusted about by Garance Marillier - even when she is eating people in the movie!
Critics had all kinds of things to say about Raw. While the most distinguished critics loved the film, others let their weak stomachs get the better of them while saying that the film was perhaps too gross. I agree much more with Katie Rife's AV Club review which described the film as "beautifully realized, symbolically rich, and disturbingly erotic meditation on primal hungers of all kinds".
She followed Raw up with two episodes of the 2021 AppleTV series Servant which introduced Julia's directing touch to American audiences for the first time. It also showed us Molly Griggs's sexy body in a variety of scenes.
Critics are already raving about her newest film Titane which was shown at this year's Cannes Film Festival. You can watch the trailer for Titane here. Based on the trailer alone, it's pretty safe to say that there is nudity in this high-octane flick. It's also clear that Julia Ducournau is creating a style that tells human stories in the most disturbing ways. I, for one, am thrilled about her career so far and I look forward to seeing a lot more!
