For a first-time moviemaker, she’s put a lot of thought into not just what kind of film she wanted to make, but how to put it into the world. Where most horror movies would allow their protagonist to give in to those desires and then deal with the consequences, Raw fixes on the moral dilemma: Can Justine resist her most basic desires, and if she gives into them, what will she become?Ībout that “horror movie” thing: Ducournau will allow that Raw is a horror movie, but insists that it is not only that. By becoming a so-called monster, she’s going to learn how to discern the difference between what is right and what is wrong.”ĭucournau asks to have surprises preserved for audiences who haven’t yet seen the film, so suffice it to say that Justine’s desire for a very specific kind of meat inevitably leads to a crisis of procurement, and that she discovers she is not the first to face this problem. We are animals that are moral, and who can discern a difference between right and wrong. It’s something that is so in denial of her humanity and of her femininity that it’s almost heartbreaking for me to hear her say it. Justine, she explains, “says this thing that is, for me, incredibly childish. Their bodies are virtually the same, so their psyches must be, as well.ĭucournau, however, isn’t cynical or glib about the connection. During the kind of hypothetical back-and-forth for which undergraduates are famous, Justine argues that there’s no difference between the anguish a woman suffers when she is raped and the feelings a monkey would experience under the same circumstances. Raw’s setting at a veterinary school naturally brings up the subject of animal behavior, and whether the boundary between humans and (other) animals is as clearly delineated as we like to believe. “It certainly talks about the birth of sexuality in a young woman,” Ducournau says, “but for me it talks more generally about growing into what it means to be human.”Īs Justine (Garance Marillier) eats meat for the first time in her life, her body reacts in unusual, violent ways Justine’s dual lusts for flesh are related, but they’re not commensurate, and the risk of monstrousness lies not in feeling the desire but in giving in to it. But this isn’t Carrie, where a girl’s transition to womanhood makes her a monster. One of the school’s hazing rituals involves covering Justine and a male student in yellow and blue paint, shutting them up in a room, and telling them not to come out until they’re both green the forced makeout session ends with the unsuspecting fellow missing a chunk of his lower lip. Her first taste of human flesh follows a scene in which her sister attempts to give Justine her first bikini wax-an attempt that goes horribly, bloodily wrong, although not in the way you’d expect. Sixteen-year-old Justine arrives at school a virgin, and the discovery of her forbidden appetites overlaps with her entering the realm of adult sexuality. Metaphorical readings of Justine’s awakening are inevitable, and the film courts them, to some extent. I took the idea of cannibals, but can be applied to many, many things.” It’s too painful to face that we humans have these parts in us. We say that they are inhuman because we don’t want to acknowledge them as being our equivalent. People tend to say they’re inhuman, but that’s not true. “Cannibals are not vampires or werewolves, they’re real people. “For me, cannibalism was the biggest taboo,” she says. But it turns out none of those meats are an acceptable substitute for what Justine really craves: human flesh. She slips a hamburger into her pocket in the school cafeteria, and progresses to gnawing on raw chicken breasts in the middle of the night. By those standards, being forced to eat a raw rabbit liver doesn’t seem too bad, but Justine and her family are devout vegetarians-in the opening scene, her mother bawls out a surly rest-stop waitress who sneaks a bit of sausage into Justine’s mashed potatoes-and complying triggers a hunger in Justine she’s never known before. New students undergo a fierce and prolonged hazing process, from having their belongings repeatedly tossed out the window and into the quad, to being drenched in animal blood. It’s set at a French veterinary school where Justine (Garance Marillier) is following in the footsteps of her parents and her older sister, Alexia (Ella Rumpf). The “return of the repressed” figures heavily in Raw, the 33-year-old Ducournau’s first theatrical feature.
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