![]() Raw is one of the best movies of the year. It's one of the most brutally honest and nuanced coming-of-age movies ever made. It's hard to imagine a better final shot in any film I'll watch in 2016, with the accompanying final line of dialogue providing the strangely beautiful and wildly disturbing punchline that you didn't previously realize the movie needed. It's a breath of fresh air and it represents the loud and proud arrival of a brilliant new talent in Julia Ducournau. Writer/director Julia Ducournau fields a Q&A following the Australian Premiere of RAW at Monster Fest 2016. Raw is funny and sad and sexy and grotesque and moving and troubling and weird. Raw: Australian Premiere Q&A: Directed by Jarret Gahan. In Ducournau's skillful hands, violence becomes a metaphor for awakenings of all kinds, sexual and emotional and mental. ![]() Every torn piece of flesh, every grisly bite wound, is a literal representation of the emotional and mental scars we collect as we grow up. Raw may be shocking, but it isn't interested in shock value. The director tells a dark coming of age story and uses themes from horror movies to express the solitude and sexual awakening of a troubled teenage girl. Eventually, the blood does start flowing (although not in the ways you would expect) and the violence is appropriately grotesque, but it serves the larger themes of the movie. ![]() Even when you hate them, you love them with all of your heart.īecause the dynamic between these characters feels so lovely and because Ducournau builds such a recognizable and stressful college environment that the horror elements work so well. Justine and Alexia fight as often as they get along and their clashes capture the honest contradictions that exist between all siblings. Writer/director Julia Ducournau certainly has talent and a natural way of handling her actors, but her film debut is just trying too hard. Their dynamic is the crux of the film, especially as Raw slowly reveals itself to be a story about two sisters getting finally getting to know each other as adults rather than as children. Just as impressive is Rumpf as Alexia, the older sister who had adjusted to life away from home and whose attempts to educate her sibling on the right and wrong ways to survive school. Justine's bumpy voyage of self-discovery is shown in excruciating detail and Marillier captures every emotional hiccup with quiet sadness. It's all about those little moments – a disquieting conversation with a professor, bad decisions made at a party where the alcohol flows a little too freely, dancing alone in your bedroom while you try out a guise you're too afraid to put on in public. The great strength of Raw is that every choice, even the ones that will turn stomachs, feels rooted in reality. Just as startling as the bursts of violence that punctuate Raw's plot are the intimate details, the tiny slice-of-life moments that are as uncomfortable as they are relatable. Marillier is a revelation as Justine and her struggle to discover an identity is funny, embarrassing, and mundane in ways that will hit home for everyone and anyone who has moved out of their parents' house.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |