Alpha
After winning the Palme d’Or with Titane (2021), Julia Ducournau returns with an emotional family drama centred on a thirteen-year-old girl who may have contracted a disease that slowly turns people into marble statues.
When Alpha comes home from a party with a tattoo, all hell breaks loose. Her single mother, a hospital worker, thinks that the dirty needle used for the tattoo may have infected her daughter with a mysterious new disease. The rumour quickly spreads at school, and Alpha becomes a pariah. Things don’t improve at home either, especially when her addicted uncle, Amin, unexpectedly arrives.
French filmmaker Julia Ducournau (Raw, Titane) is one of only three women to have won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Her third film is less extreme than her earlier work, though viewers who are squeamish about injections or needles may still find some scenes difficult to watch. Alpha is set during the 1980s and 1990s, in a grim world gripped by a highly contagious epidemic reminiscent of AIDS. Ducournau, who grew up during the AIDS crisis, recalls ‘a contagious fear and a sense of shame among an entire population group.’ Her film explores the spread of that fear and the painful stigmatization of those who became infected. The soundtrack features music by Portishead, Nick Cave, and others. (mv)