Julia Ducournau’s new film Alpha (2025) swerves away from the more straightforward genre thrills of Raw (2016) and Titane (2021) in favor of fantastical family drama. The body horror of those first two films gives way to an extended AIDS metaphor that would leave Susan Sontag stunned. (Her own criticism pushed back on using military imagery to describe “fighting” illness, as argued in her books Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors.) The bewildering saga follows the titular young girl played by Mélissa Boros as she navigates an exposure to a mysterious virus. Her father has already succumbed to the disease, which transforms its victims into statues, and her addict uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim) is struggling to stay both alive and clean. It’s a fascinating parable, even if sometimes the script veers too sentimental in its exploration of illness and mortality. The slow-mo simply isn’t necessary, but the familial bonds that Ducournau explores are genuinely tender.
Alpha’s violent urges emerge through close-ups of skin, needles, sores, and oozing blood. After a stick-and-poke tattoo fails to heal, the kids around Alpha begin to worry she’s been infected with the virus and proceed to relentlessly bully her. Only her Mom (Golshifteh Farahani) provides her with a safe space—at least until her brother Amin returns and starts rooming with her prickly daughter. The fragility of childhood and its vulnerability to the real world is often one of the director’s themes. “I’m too young,”Alpha says repeatedly. She simply longs to be in her mother’s arms and listen to Berber lullabies.
The parallels between the craggy, calcifying virus and AIDS itself are abundant. One of Alpha’s teachers is gay and his partner passes away after turning into a marble man who coughs up dust. Alpha is one of the only students not to bully the English teacher for his “faggy” voice. She knows what it’s like to have everyone run from her in the hallway or swim away in terror when she bleeds into the pool or drips in the school shower. Even Alpha’s lover, who admittedly has an actual girlfriend, betrays her. After all, this is a comic horror film about family and the destruction of childhood naivety. There’s always some intruder waiting at the door: death, sex, bullies, religion. Alpha’s Muslim identity takes a backseat in the film, only slightly being explored during a big family Eid dinner.
In Alpha, the protagonists are always in favor of rights for the ill. Their rage and self-destructive tendencies are rendered in an almost romantic, nostalgic register. The pessimism of Ducournau’s earlier films has evaporated. Instead, her lens takes on rosier, warmer hues to chart shifting timelines as Alpha grows older and her mother tries to save her uncle Amin from his addiction and illness. Her world swirls around in dust as she watches the virus ravage her family. Sickness eventually eclipses the fantasy of escape and Alpha is forced to confront young adulthood. Some fairy tales are only meant for children.
Alpha screens tonight, March 14, at Film at Lincoln Center as part of “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.” Director Julia Ducournau will be in attendance for a Q&A.
