Raw is raw. It’s one of the most visceral, evocative films I’ve ever experienced. It’s a movie that really affected me when I first watched it, both on an emotional level, and in a literal physical sense. Watching this movie, even now on a third go around, it still makes me quiver, I still feel this absolute rush of anxiety and horror when experiencing it, my stomach goes uneasy, I start to feel the individual bones and ts in my fingers and my toes, becoming hyper aware of their movements, these feelings rush over me in this massive tidal wave across my mind and my body. It's able to completely paralyse me into a trance with how effective it is at reinterpreting a real life feeling and experience into a fun, horrifying, interesting, work of total art.

It's a fantastic coming of age story in essence, but framed around this idea of cannibalism. If you break down this story at its core, it's about a girl being plunged into medical school and exploring herself, but the exploration at play is finding out you're into cannibalism. It's obviously not a relatable experience (I hope), but it basically acts as a slate to where you can project what you like onto it, cannibalism is just a stand in for whatever you interpret it as being. It could be related to sexuality, it could act as a stand in for drugs/alcohol, it's really open ended, which is what I love. It's this all consuming feeling she finds, which she never even knew about herself or realised until now, and she goes wild with it, becoming animalistically consumed in her desires.
She starts out totally against meat of any kind, but once she starts feeling that desire, she's ashamed about it for a while, ashamed that she’s indulging in it all, but she starts going deeper and deeper, becoming consumed and starts to become a worse person because of that before by the end, she learns how to control it.

And what a fucking way to portray this visceral feeling of desire than the most visceral shit of all, blood and guts and gore and rashes. The scenes involving the cannibalism aspects are insanely well done, it all feels real which is what makes it so horrific. The finger scene is horrifying as it shows her fully fall into this spiral.
The scene where she's under her duvet curled up and shaking is fucking terrifying. It's probably the scene that shows off how great Garrance Marillier is in this role. She's amazing in this movie.

It's also a fish out of water type situation. This hazing ritual thing feels almost cultish in its setup. The scene where they burst into the room and it erupts into chaos and the following party scene, all done in one take which works at conveying that anxiety and the fear of being somewhere entirely new and different and out of your comfort zone. Where everything seems terrifying and against you at all times. Justine initially doesn't want to engage with it all, all the partying and the initiation stuff.

It also focuses in on the sister relationship, showing the different stages in their cannibalism, where Alexia has fully embraced it, while Justine is just falling into it. It's clear they love and care about each other, despite clashing quite a lot, to the point where Alexia takes the fall for Justine to allow her to have a second chance to get out of the cycle and desire she had succumb to.

And that ending, OOF, it's such a great, horrific reveal with the dad’s chest filled with scars and bites, showing how this addiction never truly fades, you can only find ways to cope with it.

This movie is also pretty funny, which I forgot. The old dude in the hospital waiting room who scares Justine with his false teeth and starts chuckling about it got a genuine laugh out of me.

It's a gorgeous movie visually, the colour pallet, the composition of each shot, the camera moves, it's all on point and fantastic
The music was great, the score is really evocative, the main theme used in that finger scene is really powerful and haunting.
Also, what the fuck was with that song during the mirror scene, that shit was wild!

This movie shows that Julia Ducournau is a director to watch out for. She directs this movie with absolute ease, it's all done to perfection. It’s as I said, so evocative and effective and that comes down to some truly great direction. It was actually just announced that she's working on her next feature film Titane, and I am so excited to find out what the hell it is.

This movie also played a somewhat important role for me, as it was the first time I'd ever watched a foreign-language film. I had put off exploring non-English films for so long, and this movie acted as a gateway into that world. I didn't know it was French going into it, and I was worried when I saw the subtitles pop up. But this movie was able to show me that “hey, watching movies with subtitles isn’t that big a deal” and “there are great movies being made all around the world” and it led into me diving more into that and finding some truly incredible films.

But this movie is one of my favourites of all time. For a brief period, I had this on my top 4. It's not there anymore, but it's definitely up there for me. It's something entirely special and unique. It evokes a feeling in me like no other film had before, or has since. It's this momentous, personal, experience that I love and am repulsed by dearly.

I'm probably going to write an even bigger piece on this movie at some point because I just love it so much. I'm very annoyed somebody picked this for Film Club before me, but I'm also not annoyed at all because it forced me to watch this movie again.

Watched as part of Film Club

Film Club Ranked