Julia Ducournau wrote ad directed Alpha, a body horror drama, which most critics deemed as inferior to her previous feature, Titane, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Fest, in which Spike Lee was the jury president.
Grade: C+ (** out of *****)
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theatrical release poster
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The film stars the estimable actors, Tahar Rahim (Audiard’s 2009 Prophet, The Mauritanian) and Golshifteh Farahani (Jim Jarmusch’s 2016 Paterson).
In secondar rles are Mélissa Boros, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield, and Louai El Amrousy.
The tale follows a teenage girl who, after returning from school with a strange tattoo, is feared to have contracted a new, lethal bloodborne disease.
Almost inevitably, the fictitious disease in the film has been analyzed by most critics as an allegory for HIV/AIDS, with the plot reflecting the beginning of the epidemic in the 1980s.
The film had its world premiere in the main competition of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and will be released in France by Diaphana on August 20.
The entreprenerial Neon bought American distribution rights at the Marché du Film of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, after distributing Ducournau’s previous movie, Titane.
Alpha, a troubled adolescent, age 13, lives with her single mother, amid the context of a strange new bloodborne disease, one which slowly turns its sufferers to marble.
Their world collapses the day Alpha returns from school with a tattoo on her arm, leading her mother to fear that she has contracted the disease herself.
Tahar Rahim plays Amin, a heroin addict whose renewed presence in the life of his sister and eponymous niece leads to a psychologically traumatic yet cathartic reckoning for the mother and daughter.
You cannot blame the central actors for the faulty, all too obvious drama of fear and paranoia, which, is arguably the weakest of Ducournau’s three features to date.
The brilliant actor Rahim told the press that, in order to understand the mindset of Amin, he had dropped 40lbs to embody the characer’s fragile frame, and spent many weeks with Gaia, a charity that works with people struggling with and overcoming addiction.
And, indeed, Amin is the text’s most touching charcater, and his scenes are the most troubling and upsetting in what is a sharply uneven drama.
Overall, though, lacking the humor and irony that had defined Titane, Alpha unfolds as a dead-serious, overwrought feature, which uncharacteristically of the director’s other work, is often repetitious in theme and tedious in pacing.
Cast
Mélissa Boros as Alpha
Ambrine Trigo Ouaked as 5-year-old Alpha
Golshifteh Farahani as Maman
Tahar Rahim as Amin
Emma Mackey as Infirmière
Finnegan Oldfield as Professeur d’anglais
Louai El Amrousy as Adrien
Credits:
Directed, written by Julia Ducournau
Produced by Jean des Forêts, Amelie Jacqu, Éric Altmayer, Nicolas Altmayer
Cinematography Ruben Impens
Edited by Jean-Christophe Bouzy
Music by Jim Williams
Release dates: May 19, 2025 (Cannes); August 20, 2025 (France); Mubi (USA)
Running time: 128 minutes
