He may have abandoned his religion’s rules on sex, but he is still expected by the white French girl to obey the dietary laws. This is surely part of the fantastical aspect of the film, isn't it? The school is overwhelmingly white, but Adrien seems to be of North African descent – a fact underlined at the school cafeteria where Justine warns Adrien that he has taken the pork dish. I do not know how French dorms function, but apparently, when Justine asked for a female roommate, they coupled her with a gay man.
There are several scenes where the newcomers are indoctrinated, one in which they chant what seems to be a perverted version of a veterinary’s oath, which sounds like an updated version of Marseillaise. When Justine refuses to gulp down a small rabbit organ, they have a face-off with Alexia, and she has to comply in order not to be ostracized. This is when I wonder about the genre of the film, and think we are within the bounds of the fantastical. The struggle starts in earnest when the next day, after having been doused in animal blood, the rookies are forced to gulp down random parts of animals. The party reveals that Alexia, as a senior, has bought into the senior-rookie power structure and it is clear that Justine is feeling alienated. At this point, the audience has to rethink their assumptions about university being the place where young people are allowed to decide on their own preferences. There is a lot of shouting and swearing and letting the rookies know they have to act exactly as their seniors tell them to. The way they are roused from their beds is nothing short of a raid it mimics the scenes of Jews being herded into wagons with whatever they have on familiar to us from World War II films. Justine manages to connect with her sister only during a rave held in the middle of the night where the “rookies” are supposed to go crawling on all fours – a rude introduction to the fact that they will be looking after animals their whole life. Yet more signals that not all is well with this family. The father is incensed and does not wait for Alexia to appear and drives off. She is supposed to be received by her older sister Alexia who’s already studying there but she never shows up on her arrival. Whichever way she may have been raised, Justine is now going to university to become a vet, so she can decide on her lifestyle.
Do parents have the right to withhold meat from their children? Do parents have the right to stop them from eating pork or drinking alcohol? Can parents encourage their girls to put on a hijab? Can they decide not to send them to mixed swimming lessons? Can they decide whether their sons will be circumcised? This being the Francophone world, of course, the moment becomes instantly political and a metaphor for many other things. We seem to be in a situation where a family has decided on the diet of their children. The following conversation among the three members of the family doesn’t make it clear if Justine has an allergy to the meat or if she is vegetarian by choice. She spits, almost vomits it out – we are getting ready early in the film for convulsions and expulsions of the body. Justine’s (and with this, there are shades of Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia”) plate of mashed potatoes seems to have a meatball in it. The tension mounts when they stop for lunch. There are already hints of Michael Haneke’s middle-class angst here, with the wife seeming to be fawning over the husband, leaving the daughter somewhat alone. The scene then switches to Justine traveling with her overbearing parents, and in the close space of the car, it is clear all is not well. “Raw,” then, will be the back story of how the girl got to be there. Here’s a girl who has hunted down “raw” flesh and is about to get her quarry. It doesn’t take a minute, but Ducournau has already told a whole story, particularly when coupled with the film’s English title. “Raw” opens with a wide shot of the French countryside where a slim figure in the distance seems to cause a car crash willingly and then walks toward the bungled-up vehicle. For those of us, it is a film to be enjoyed on a small screen. It would be a pity if those interested in contemporary France missed out on it, because, they, like me, think the horror genre to be a no-go area.
#RAW FILM JULIA DUCOURNAU SERIES#
To understand what charmed the Cannes jury in Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” one can turn to her 2016 film “Grave” (“Serious”), publicized in English as “Raw,” possibly to attract horror film lovers with a darker name, and even suggest a kinship with the successful series “Saw.” There is, indeed, much sawing of flesh in this film, however, the atmosphere immediately invites a metaphorical and political reading.
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