Raw

MOVIE #1,089 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.01.23 Part of My (impromptu) JULIA DUCOURNAU Director Focus This is, of course, a landmark film because it opened our eyes to the plight of vicious hazing within the French veterinary school industry. It’s also a movie how a college-aged daughter never went to the pool or beach with her dad, not even one time in her entire life. You can drop the audience into a world with little to no context and your movie can work, sometimes to greater effect even (I’m seeing this with fellow French director Claire Denis right now). But when your film is draped with such heavy-handed metaphors, or at least the glaring vision that “that’s the idea!”, well, there needs to be a bit more set-up, more depth.

Outside of a quick scene where Justine’s mother complains about a rogue meatball in her vegetarian daughter’s food, we don’t really glean the gist of this relationship, which — because it is revealed at the very end of the film that she is also a genetic cannibal (?) who had to learn how to not try to eat her husband’s torso (???) — is simply bad storytelling. And forget the older sister character, whose every whim and action feels like some forced propulsion to move the plot forward. We don’t have a clue as to why she’s the way that she is (other than, hey, she’s related to Justine!).

The device of cannibalism as a stand-in for coming-of-age in a dog-eat-dog world is both fine/easy to understand and completely convoluted/messy in practice. Ducournau has been compared to Cronenberg ad nauseum and that’s obvious and apt. I see some definite parallels in my struggle to fully connect with some of his beloved early work in that they eschew simplicity and strong characters in exchange for WTF shock value and chaotic set-pieces.

But still, it’s not a complete failure. Raw is a step forward stylistically and Garance Marillier is compelling in the lead, especially given the flawed material. There’s just not nearly enough meat on the bone. Pun intended! Shout-out to this easter egg, though…

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,088 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,090 ⫸

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Raw (French: Grave) is a 2016 coming-of-age body horror drama film written and directed by Julia Ducournau, and starring Garance Marillier, Ella Rumpf, and Rabah Nait Oufella. The plot follows a young vegetarian's first year at veterinary school, where she tastes meat for the first time and develops a craving for human flesh. It was released on May 14, 2016.