Why Julia Ducournau’s Alpha is a future cult classic

Julia Ducournau jokes about it herself: critics at this year’s Cannes wanted “Titane 2”. In 2016, the 41-year-old French filmmaker caused infamy with Raw, a cannibal-themed coming-of-ager that resulted in ambulances turning up at TIFF when audience members fainted. Her 2021 follow-up, Titane, a body-horror in which a woman has sex with a car, proved even more daring: it won the Palme d’Or, was France’s Oscar submission, and made people reconsider what kind of film can be taken seriously at Cannes.

With Alpha, then, expectations were high, and critics at its world premiere in May were stunned: despite its outré sci-fi premise, Ducournau’s third feature is arguably a heartfelt familial drama about grief. The reviews at Cannes were vitriolic: it was called “dour and dismal” (IndieWire), a “true turkey” (The Guardian), and “painful” (Variety). In the intervening months, though, there’s been a backlash to the backlash. Alpha is, in fact, bold, poetic and thrillingly original; reactions during the London Film Festival point towards it becoming a future cult favourite.

“All the films I’ve ever made, including my first short, have been polarising,” Ducournau tells me with a laugh. “It’s not news. It’s really something I don’t care about. I don’t mind [bad reviews] to a point that you have no idea.” It’s five months after Cannes and we’re in the outdoor section of a restaurant (it allows Ducournau to smoke) near Waterloo. During this period, the director has noticed, like I have, that Alpha is more popular with younger crowds than the typically older figures who review for trade publications.

“I really believe that the people who relate to my films the most are young people,” says Ducournau. “I see it at Q&As, and when I talk to them. And also the queer community is extremely present within my fans, which not only am I proud of, but it makes complete sense, considering that I’m queer, and I believe that my movies are queer in the first sense of the word; in the sense that defying the norm will always be fucking necessary to move things forward.”

Even though Alpha is set in the past, its nightmarish world feels like the future. In 1990s France, red dust floods the streets and an unnamed virus literally turns people to marble. The pandemic leads to humans with crumbling, stone-like skin being victimised and shunned by society. When a 13-year-old girl, Alpha (Mélissa Boros), possibly catches the virus, she’s bullied at school and deemed undatable; bleeding in a swimming pool from a head wound, she watches other kids flee in terror. In a hospital, a nurse played by a French-speaking Emma Mackey sighs, “It must be hell to be a kid today.”

What prompted Ducournau to write Alpha was the state of the world around her. “We find ourselves in such a state of powerlessness that it feels impossible to fictionalise the days we’re living through, because we don’t have the distance,” she says. “We don’t have time to mourn. We’re constantly asked to be distracted by other things in order to not think about it. And also because of survival mode. The double effect of survival mode is that it can lead you to denial. As my film shows: denial only brings more trauma, if you’re unable to grieve anything.”

I believe that my movies are queer in the first sense of the word; in the sense that defying the norm will always be fucking necessary to move things forward

Despite some viewers’ and critics’ interpretations, Ducournau has previously said that she doesn’t view the film as a parable for Aids. However, she clarifies: “I transferred the fear and shock I feel every day to the 90s, which was the period I first felt that people were doomed to die. It was the peak of the Aids pandemic. There was no cure. People were being shamed, isolated and ostracised. Society told them they deserve what they got.”

Shifting between two timelines, Alpha also follows Alpha’s unnamed mother (Golshifteh Farahani) and uncle, Amin (Tahar Rahim), a malnourished addict slowly succumbing to the sci-fi disease. Alpha’s mother, a doctor, tends to Amin’s marbled back through injections; accidentally scraping the surface too hard, she shrieks as around 10 per cent of his body crumbles to the floor. The sequence is more haunting than anything in Raw or Titane.

Ducournau chose marble as a reference to religious sculptures in churches and cathedrals. “I wanted to implement some sacredness, and give back dignity to the people who are in my film, and also the people in the 90s who were infected by HIV and considered ‘lesser’ than others. I wanted to elevate their lives, and build a monument to their memory through marble.”

I tell her that my brain struggles to process the images of Rahim and others turning to slabs of rock. “It’s disturbing to see stone and flesh co-exist, because stone isn’t mutable. The metal in Titane – if we put it in fire, it’s going to melt and mutate into liquid. But marble isn’t going to mutate into a liquid or gas. To me, the vision of all my films is that life is a mutation. Death is the absence of mutation. When you have a non-mutable material co-existing with flesh – which is a material that’s being pumped by blood constantly because of the heart – it gives an uncanny image when it’s someone who hasn’t lost their human appearance. They don’t become an alien. They’re still human.” She describes the image of someone in the film whose final body part that turns to stone is their eyeball. “That’s what my fear of death looks like.”

Throughout the conversation, Ducournau is keen to hear my thoughts and theories. She also wants it emphasised in the article that the red dust should represent whatever the audience takes away from it. (It’s a contrast from when I interviewed her for Titane, and she told me, “You are so far off.”) She explains, “The red dust is a symbol for the body – blood petrifies and becomes red dust – and the red wind is the memories of who we lost to the pandemic.”

For a long time, the only image released from Alpha was of Alpha’s face amidst red dust. It’s actually from the final scene of the film – a marketing move approved by Ducournau because nobody could possibly know what any of it means beforehand. “Even though the wind wipes everything away, the red dust remains on her skin. The ones who perished are part of her now.”

The director embarks on her version of a Seinfeldian rant. “Grieving isn’t something that’s temporary. If you’re mourning, people tell you it’ll take six months, two years, whatever, to get your life back. I don’t believe that. Losing someone you love is a pivotal moment in your life, and you mutate into another state of being. You’re going to be in that state until the end of your days.”

“It feels impossible to fictionalise the days we’re living through... We don’t have time to mourn. We’re constantly asked to be distracted by other things in order to not think about it

Soundtrack-wise, Alpha sticks to the 80s and 90s with Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat” and Portishead’s “Roads”. However, my favourite moment of Alpha (I also know someone who pinpointed it as when she knew she hated the film) is when Alpha sprints to Tame Impala’s “Let It Happen”. Ducournau describes the anachronism as allowing the different timelines to intertwine. “I also use the song at such a loud level because it’s like a scream. Alpha understands that the only way to overcome trauma is to relive it. The lyrics talk for her: ‘Let it happen.’”

At the end of the interview, Ducournau returns to my initial comment that Alpha feels futuristic. She speaks positively about how today’s teenagers are more open-minded in terms of identity and sexuality than her generation. “Obviously we’re seeing a rise in homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny,” she says. “But the scene with the [gay] English teacher, when the student calls him the F-word, people laugh and don’t do anything about it. That was common in the 90s, unfortunately. That’s why I think this film couldn’t be set in the future. I really hope we don’t go back to that [homophobia] in the future.”

Alpha is out in UK cinemas on November 14