Raw
By Dwayne Tillman
The coming-of-age film has gone through a bit of a renaissance of late thanks to a chain of excellent women-fronted and women-directed films. Andrea Arnold’s American Honey and Rosemary Myers’ Girl Asleep were two of my absolute highlights of 2016, and Kelly Fremon Craig’s underappreciated The Edge of Seventeen is also one of the best films I’ve seen this year. Continuing this chain is the boldest, most extreme effort yet, coming all the way from France; Julia Ducournau’s Raw.
Raw made headlines in September last year after its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival for being the film that caused mass walkouts and reports of fainting audience members as a result of its graphic content. I can tell you right now that there is absolutely nothing in Raw that will cause you to faint, and to reduce it down to being ‘that cannibal movie that made people faint’ does a great disservice to work of genius on display. For Raw is one of the most refreshingly audacious films to grace cinema screens in some time; a truly impressive debut feature from an extremely promising filmmaker.
We’re introduced to our protagonist, the vegetarian Justine (Garance Marillier, in a fiercely brave and compelling performance), at the beginning of her course at a vet school. Once there, she’s forced to eat a rabbit kidney as part of a hazing ritual. Much to her surprise, this unleashes a new found hunger inside her. Before too long, we see her chowing down on raw chicken meat from her room mates’ fridge, and then… actual human flesh. Not to mention dealing with some conflicting teenage emotions and some serious sibling rivalry with her sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf).
Now don’t get me wrong; Raw is kinda gross at times. The seriously impressive make up and practical effects will have you consciously itching at your skin and absolutely justifies its R18+ rating. But the thing that separates this from other extreme body horror films (the execrable Human Centipede films come to mind), is that it never becomes off putting or deliberately gory. Ducournau is much more focused on developing ideas and layering on symbolism and subtext than being overly trigger-happy with the gore moments, which is something I’ve seen become a bit of a trend in modern horror. As such, you really feel the tension of the story.
I also feel that this is one of the few horror films I’ve seen in some time to actually do what horror films should: horrify. Raw isn’t quite ‘keep you up at night’ horror (unless you find skin peeling particularly nightmarish), it’s more so ‘gasp out loud, squirm in your seat’ horror. You may want to look away, but you’ll be too transfixed to actually do it; not to mention the fact that the film is too beautiful to look away from anyway (there are so many gorgeously framed shots that will be forever seared onto your retinas.)
Funnily enough, for all this talk about fainting audience members and barf bags at the door, the most interesting thing about Raw is actually Ducournau’s deconstruction of teenage identity. On a surface level, you can look at it as a blood-soaked, arthouse coming-of-age film. However, there are a great number of other themes presented throughout; female sexuality, desire, misogyny, liberation to name but a few. More than anything, it’s a brilliantly feminist commentary about breaking expectation (“Women aren’t meant to be gross!”. The way Ducournau initially breaks expectations and continues to do so throughout the film is by far the most impressive thing about it. These kind of themes aren’t shown in such detail let alone talked about in films these days, so the fact that Ducournau unflinchingly approaches them is truly fantastic. While this is a coming-of-age tale for Justine, I also feel that it’s one of sorts for the audience as well, in the way we should expect horror films to bring light to themes and ideas similar to these. For all of Raw’s grotesque qualities, the film startingly feels like a massive breath of fresh air. It presents a voice and perspective that has been notoriously missing from the horror genre.
Admittedly, Raw occasionally jumps abruptly between plot points, which comes across a bit jarring and slightly confusing. However, you’d be hard pressed to find anything else showing at the movies right now that’s as bold, smart and exciting as this. Rejoice! A new voice in horror has awakened.