Raw (Focus World, 2016)
The Body Horror Hype Machine Raw Is Surprisingly Delightful
Raw was one of the secret screenings at Telluride Horror Show. No one going into the theater knew what they were about to see. One of the festival programmers stood at the front to introduce the film without naming it—quite impressive showmanship. He talked about it winning the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes and how some viewers had apparently fainted at the Toronto International Film Festival, unable to stomach the body horror elements. At this proclamation two uneasy audience members near the front, unwilling to risk fainting themselves, promptly exited to a humorous uproar from the rest of the crowd. Yes, this film has a reputation.
But it does not devolve into a gore fest; it smartly chooses its punctuated moments. Still, I didn’t see all the fuss about it (in terms of the fainting narrative, this is not a demerit). The gruesome effects were well done. The film looked great. It certainly has its points that made me wince. But it didn’t seem just exceptionally punishing for something of the genre. (I do seek out this sort of stuff, so maybe I’m not the one to try to understand some people’s more extreme reactions.) Maybe that’s part of the reason why the film succeeds so well: it doesn’t obnoxiously try so hard to be nauseating and challenging—the meaty whole of it can shine.
The film centers around young Justine (Garance Marillier), who at the beginning moves into a prestigious veterinary school away from her parents. She is the good girl juxtaposed with the almost black sheep of an older sister (Ella Rumpf), who also attends the vet school. Justine has been raised a stout vegetarian, but during part of an extended hazing from the “elders” of the school (which is pretty brutal even for an American college student such as myself so familiar with the frat-bro culture surrounding some of my peers) she is forced to eat a rabbit’s kidney. Soon after, a new and strange taste for meat begins to grow in Justine.
A taste for meat. In a horror film. You can see where this is going.
In the face of all the brouhaha about the gore and the fainting and whatnot, I expected more of a slow burn of a film, something dour and dark. I certainly love feel-bad movies, but I could not have been more happily wrong. Amidst all the preamble about this film, nobody told me just how fun it was. As Justine’s cravings gets stronger and more difficult to hide, Raw absolutely loves how crazy it becomes, reveling in its own corporeal manias. The fun is helped along by its real but sparse humor—it’s full of genuine laughs but not so much that it turns into a horror-comedy hybrid, so that the scenes’ moody gruesomeness still packs a punch. Again, this film does not—as that person we all know who wants so desperately to be bad/cool—try too hard to scandalize, but rather invites the audience in, almost paradoxically, to be repulsed. It hauntingly smiles at the mess it creates, similar to how Justine sneers into the camera zooming in on her during a particular college party, letting you know that shit is about to go down.
Having such an interesting, pervasive character (I believe Justine is a part of every scene) about whom viewers care deeply also helps to endear us to the madness that transpires. Marillier is fantastic as our protagonist. One part of her plays the naïve vulnerability of a sheltered girl flung into the mad world of university brilliantly. Just her eyes are incredibly expressive, almost making us forget the dark hunger inside of her that will come out in the very next scene. Justine is not at all a bad guy or even an antihero. She’s a girl with needs, urges, and problems, and this authenticity in her “normal” scenes helps us sympathize. But when her hunger does take over, she joyously goes all-in on the film’s glorious madness. It almost becomes ridiculous at times, some of the shots nearing parody, but it handles the tonal shifts so well (I think partly in service to Marillier) so as not to devolve into an ironic farce. The script’s tight propulsiveness also contributes to the fun—I can’t think of a single scene that did not further inform us on the characters through purely visual means.
One of the almost ridiculous shots I allude to combines the face of orgasm and blood in such a way that is both as sickening as it sounds and also delightful. It must be noted that we are never asked to objectify Justine or sadistically gawk—the violence meant to be celebrated is always accomplished through her own agency, and her mistakes and misfortune always extract an understanding from us. Her growing hunger seems to be implicitly linked with her sexual maturation (she’s a virgin) and those themes become explosively entwined. (The undertones of the film are also handled perfectly, poignant and real without being jarringly unsubtle or without mystery.) The progression of these themes soon turns the film into a lovely twist on the notion of “finding yourself” and embracing one’s true nature in college, once free from the restraint of a parentally controlled household and one’s own embarrassing immaturity.
I walked out of the cinema smiling. Take it seriously when I say this film is a fucking blast, an outright fist-pumper if the moments some found difficult to watch can be celebrated. Raw makes for a wonderful theatrical experience. See it with a crowd that is game, if you can, so you can all gasp and cringe and roar together.
Author Biography
Zach Villemez is a senior English Literature major at Hendrix College in Conway, AR. His undergraduate thesis is being written on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and he cries without fail upon every re-watch of Rocky.
Mentor Biography
Kristi McKim is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Hendrix College, where she was awarded the Charles S. and Lucile Esmon Shivley Odyssey Professorship, honored as the 2014-15 United Methodist Exemplary Professor, and nominated for the CASE U.S. Professors of the Year Award. Her publications include the books Love in the Time of Cinema (2011) and Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (2013), in addition to pieces in Camera Obscura, Studies in French Cinema, Senses of Cinema, Film International, The Cine-Files, and Film-Philosophy.
Department Overview
Hendrix College offers a major in English with an emphasis in Film Studies and a minor in Film Studies. This growing program within an intimate and rigorous liberal arts college environment includes a variety of courses in the history and theory of film and media, alongside co-curricular experiences (such as this trip to the New York Film Festival) generously made possible through the Hendrix-Odyssey Program. Extracurricular film-related groups include Hendrix Film Society and Hendrix Filmmakers.
Film Details
Raw (Grave, 2016)
France
Director Julia Ducournau
Runtime 99 minutes
Follow this link to read the introduction to this set of reviews: https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2016/12/15/2016-telluride-horror-show-introduction/
