Writer/Director Julia Ducournau returns with her third film Alpha and though the film has elements of body horror, it mostly diverges from her past viscera-drenched works Raw and Titane, delivering a story with themes of grieving and the agony of letting someone go instead.
A bloodborne epidemic is spreading across the city, the disease causing people to slowly turn to stone as if they’d locked eyes with Medusa. The transformation is agonizingly slow though, taking weeks to reach completion, but the end result is a person’s skin and inner organs petrifying.
In the midst of this pandemic, 13-year-old Alpha (played with amazing maturity by Mélissa Boros) rebels against the world as her mother (Golshifteh Farahani), a doctor, works around the clock at the local overwhelmed hospital. When her drug addicted uncle Amin (Tahar Ramin) arrives and desperately needs care, Alpha’s mother finds herself overtaxed, having to treat patients and deal with his addiction. When Alpha gets a tattoo and finds out later it was from a used needle, she and her mother fear that Alpha will be the next victim of the plague sweeping across the city.
Alpha is definitely not a feel-good film. The entire film is drenched in fear and anxiety, with Alpha’s mother (her name is never revealed) constantly worrying about her daughter’s health and brother’s addiction. Alpha continues going to school but is treated like an outcast by the other kids, making her intolerable life even more stressful and Amin, like all addicts, is trapped in a cycle of either being high or hunting for his next high.
The trio’s stress is infectious and I found myself worrying any time Alpha had a mysterious new itch or skin discoloration somewhere. Does she have the disease or not? It brought back the same paranoia I felt during the COVID era, when someone coughing nearby made you subconsciously (or not) want to run away from them, when occupying any crowded area could consign you to a death sentence.
Golshifteh Farahani is amazing as Alpha’s mother. Strong, fierce, and above all, full of compassion for everyone. No matter how awful Alpha is to her, she still goes out of her way to give Alpha her time and attention. The most tragic aspect of the film isn’t the epidemic, it’s Alpha’s mother’s obsession with keeping her brother alive, even though he’s desperate to end it all. She keeps her brother alive through sheer force of will. In one scene, Amin begs her just to let him die when he overdoses for the umpteenth time. He goes unconscious and Alpha’s mother, ignoring his pleas, drives a needle into his heart, bringing him back to life with no more emotion than if she just jump-started her car.
Keeping him alive has become a chore for her, like washing the dishes or taking out the trash.
Amin’s not just imprisoned by drugs, he’s imprisoned by Alpha’s mother too, whose refusal to let him go is always going to checkmate his desire to die.
As great as most of the film is, Ms. Ducournau nearly ruins things in the last 15 minutes, making the mind-boggling decision to jump around in time during the climactic sequence, which was incredibly confusing and I’m STILL trying to figure out what happened during it. It’s a shame because up to that point the film was masterfully done. Sometimes technique can get in the way of just letting the story unfold naturally and that definitely happened here.
Despite that, I still enjoyed the film, though not as much as Ms. Ducournau’s previous work. I hope she continues branching off in different directions with her projects, but without the time-jumping please.
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