BODY LANGUAGE
FOR JULIA DUCOURNAU, THE filmmaking process is similar to the lion’s share of her art: a matter of life and death. This distinction will surprise no one even broadly familiar with her work.
Her debut feature, Raw, introduced her to the international stage as a bold storyteller with an eye for the visceral. The film follows a young vegetarian, Justine, who develops a craving for human flesh after her carnivorous virginity is broken at a hazing ritual. Not only does it literally straddle the line between life and death, it percolates with the deep idiosyncrasy of an artist who leaves nothing on the table. Justine, as with all of Ducournau’s characters, is rich with humanistic moral ambiguity.
The conversation that emerged around in the mainstream press, and indeed during the film’s marketing campaign, was variably reductive. Aside from the graphic extremities, here was a film that resonated with love and empathy for its protagonist; a coming-of-ager full of visual poetry. Yet some simply labelled Ducournau a “provocateur,” or superficially described her work
