In the splatter of blood and grind of metal, two French films redefine what it means to be human—or inhuman.

 

Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016) and Titane (2021) stand as twin pillars of contemporary body horror, thrusting viewers into nightmares where flesh rebels against form and identity dissolves into desire. These works, born from the provocative tradition of New French Extremity, do more than shock; they probe the fragile boundaries of selfhood, sexuality, and society with unflinching precision.

 

  • Ducournau’s evolution from vegetarian cannibalism in Raw to cyborg impregnation in Titane, pushing body horror into uncharted territories of transformation.
  • Interwoven explorations of gender fluidity, familial trauma, and erotic violence that challenge normative identities.
  • A lasting legacy that cements her as a visionary, influencing global horror with raw intensity and philosophical depth.

 

Flesh First Bites: The Carnivorous Core of Raw

Justine, a freshman veterinarian played by Garance Marillier, arrives at her elite university with a lifetime of abstaining from meat, mirroring her parents’ strict vegetarianism. The hazing ritual—a raw kidney forced down her throat—ignites an insatiable hunger that spirals into full-blown cannibalism. Ducournau crafts this descent not as mere gore, but as a metaphor for adolescent awakening, where bodily urges clash with imposed civility. Scenes of Justine gnawing on a classmate’s severed finger in a nightclub toilet pulse with erotic tension, the close-up cinematography by Ruben Impens capturing saliva-slicked lips and trembling flesh in stark, unflattering light.

The film’s power lies in its physiological realism; Ducournau, with her background in screenwriting and a fascination for medicine, consulted veterinarians and medical experts to depict cravings with clinical accuracy. Justine’s skin itches, peels, and erupts in rashes, symbolising the rupture between her intellectual self and primal instincts. This is body horror at its most intimate, turning puberty’s awkward metamorphoses into a feast of self-destruction. Marillier’s performance, all wide-eyed innocence fracturing into feral glee, anchors the narrative, her physical commitment—eating real animal entrails—mirroring the character’s insatiable void.

Family dynamics amplify the horror: Justine’s sister Alexia, introduced as a glamorous but volatile figure, shares this carnivorous curse, their sibling bond twisting into a incestuous tableau. A car crash early on foreshadows the vehicular obsessions of Ducournau’s later work, embedding trauma in metal and motion. Raw premiered at Toronto International Film Festival to fainted audience members, its marketing coyly warning of graphic content, yet it transcends exploitation by interrogating how society suppresses base desires.

Chrome Cravings: Titane‘s Mechanical Mayhem

Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) begins life scarred by a childhood car accident, a titanium plate in her skull forging an erotic bond with automobiles. As an adult, she dances provocatively atop cars at motor shows, luring men to brutal deaths before a bizarre pregnancy by a Cadillac swells her abdomen with an inhuman spawn. Ducournau escalates Raw‘s fleshly horrors into industrial fusion, where oil-smeared bodies merge with engine roars, culminating in a birth scene of wrenching, metallic expulsion.

The narrative pivots midway when Alexia, fleeing her murders, impersonates the long-lost son of firefighter Vincent (Vincent Lindon), binding them in a poignant father-son masquerade. This gender switch-up, with Alexia binding her breasts and adopting a crew cut, explores identity’s performativity amid escalating body distortions—her skin bubbling, metal plates shifting. Impens’s camera lingers on sweat-glistened torsos and grinding pistons, blending automotive fetishism with maternal dread in a symphony of squelches and revs.

Titane, winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, shocked with its Palme-granting audacity, yet its tenderness shines in Alexia’s paternal embrace with Vincent, a brute softened by grief. Lindon’s raw portrayal, drawing from his own working-class roots, grounds the absurdity, while Rousselle’s mute intensity conveys layers of pain and pleasure. Production drew from Ducournau’s love of 1970s grindhouse and Cronenbergian venereal mechanics, transforming French cinema’s extremity into something profoundly queer and redemptive.

Same Veins, Deeper Cuts: Ducournau’s Directorial DNA

Across both films, Ducournau wields the body as battlefield, her style marked by long takes that immerse viewers in discomfort. In Raw, a party sequence fractures into strobe-lit chaos as Justine devours flesh; in Titane, a fire station rave pulses with rhythmic violence. Sound design by Pierre Bariaud and Benoît Ceruttin weaponises every crunch and clang, amplifying psychological fracture without relying on jump scares.

Cinematographer Ruben Impens, a constant collaborator, employs shallow depth of field to isolate writhing forms against blurred backgrounds, emphasising alienation. Lighting favours sickly fluorescents and harsh shadows, evoking clinical sterility invaded by organic rot. Ducournau’s editing, taut yet languid, mirrors bodily processes—gestation, digestion—prolonging agony for empathetic immersion.

Both films subvert horror tropes: Raw flips the Final Girl into a monster, Titane queers the slasher into saviour. Shared motifs—car crashes as origin points, sibling/paternal quests—reveal a auteurial obsession with fractured families and fluid selves, positioning her oeuvre against staid genre fare.

Identity’s Bloody Mosaic: Transformation as Theme

Identity in these films is corporeal, mutable, defined by what pierces the skin. Justine’s cannibalism devours others to forge self; Alexia’s titanium implants and automotive tryst literalise hybridity. Ducournau draws from Julia Kristeva’s abject theory, where boundaries between self and other dissolve in fluid exchanges—blood, semen, motor oil blurring distinctions.

Sexuality erupts violently: Justine’s auto-erotic finger-chewing evokes masochistic rites, while Alexia’s car sex throbs with mechanical penetration. These acts interrogate consent and desire’s monstrosity, aligning with French philosophy’s post-structuralist views on the body as text, rewritten through trauma.

Class undercurrents simmer; Justine’s bourgeois vet school contrasts her base hungers, Alexia’s trailer-park roots clash with Vincent’s blue-collar camaraderie. Gender norms shatter—women as aggressors, men as nurturers—challenging phallocentric horror legacies from Carpenter to Craven.

Racial homogeneity in casting sparks debate, yet Ducournau focuses inward, on white French suburbia’s repressions, echoing national anxieties over integration and identity post-colonialism.

Gender Fluidity and Erotic Extremity

Ducournau’s gaze lingers on the female form without objectification, celebrating its grotesque potential. Justine’s elongated clitoris post-meat binge symbolises phallic reclamation; Alexia’s pregnancy parodies maternal iconography with phallic protrusions. Queer readings abound: sisterly incest in Raw, butch masquerade in Titane, affirming non-binary possibilities amid horror’s conservatism.

Performances embody this: Marillier’s androgynous fragility evolves into dominance, Rousselle’s muscular frame defies feminine fragility. Interviews reveal Ducournau’s intent to liberate bodies from binary shackles, influenced by her bisexuality and feminist mentors.

Violence as catharsis critiques toxic masculinity; Vincent’s steroid-pumped tenderness subverts brute archetypes, suggesting redemption through bodily acceptance.

Sensory Overload: Sound and Effects Mastery

Special effects, practical throughout, ground horrors in tactility. Raw‘s prosthetics by Parisian atelier Weta-rendered rashes used silicone overlays, while Titane‘s car-baby hybrid merged animatronics with CGI sparingly, preserving handmade grotesquerie. Makeup artist Pierre-Olivier Persin crafted Alexia’s distortions with layered latex, allowing fluid movement.

Soundscapes assault: masticating slurps in Raw, engine growls in Titane, mixed to vibrate seats. Composer Jim Williams layers industrial drones with organic pulses, heightening dissociation.

Reception, Resistance, and Ripples

Raw grossed modestly but cult status ensued via VOD; Titane‘s Palme elevated it to arthouse hit. Critics hail Ducournau as heir to Cronenberg, yet some decry excess. Festivals fainted viewers, sparking memes, while academics dissect in journals like Studies in European Cinema.

Influence touches Ari Aster’s body-focused works and Gaspar Noé’s extremity, revitalising French horror globally. Remakes loom, but originals’ specificity resists commodification.

Production tales abound: Raw shot in Belgium for tax breaks, crew fainted; Titane navigated COVID with masked intimacy, Ducournau shielding actors’ vulnerability.

Director in the Spotlight

Julia Ducournau, born 7 March 1984 in Paris, grew up in a medically inclined family—her father a gynaecologist, mother a neurologist—instilling a fascination with the body’s mysteries that permeates her films. She studied literature at the Sorbonne before screenwriting at La Fémis, France’s premier film school, graduating in 2008. Her short Junior (2011), about a young man sprouting breasts, premiered at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, signalling her body horror bent and earning a César nomination.

Raw (2016), her feature debut, adapted from her own script with a €3.5 million budget from Petit Film and Frakas Productions, stunned festivals worldwide, netting nominations at Sitges and César awards. Titane (2021), budgeted at €6 million with Amazon Studios backing, clinched the Palme d’Or, making her only the second woman to win (after Jane Campion). Influences span David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Claire Denis’s sensual minimalism, and John Waters’ trash aesthetics, blended with French Extremity pioneers like Gaspar Noé and Catherine Breillat.

Ducournau’s career highlights include scripting Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) uncredited, but she prioritises directing. Post-Titane, she helmed an episode of The Witcher (2023) and preps Alpha, a werewolf tale starring Vincent Lindon. Awards tally BAFTAs, Saturn nods; she advocates female directors via Collectif 50/50. Personal life private, she resides in Paris, mentors at La Fémis. Filmography: Theresa Is a Whore (2008, short); Junior (2011, short); Raw (2016); Titane</et (2021); upcoming Alpha (TBA).

Actor in the Spotlight

Garance Marillier, born 9 February 1991 in Senlis, France, discovered acting via theatre classes, training at the prestigious Cours Florent from age 16. Breakthrough came with Raw (2016), where her portrayal of Justine catapulted her to international notice at 25, earning Fangoria Chainsaw nominations and acclaim for visceral commitment—she consumed 4kg of meat daily for role prep.

Pre-Raw, roles included Les Héros (2012); post, she starred in Climax (2018) as a dancer in Gaspar Noé’s psychedelic frenzy, A Friendly Tale (Fantasies) (2018) by Jean Achache, and Shadow (2020). Television credits: La Garce (2022). Nominated César for Most Promising Actress (Raw), she balances horror with drama, citing influences like Isabelle Huppert. Filmography: My Golden Days (2015); Raw (2016); Climax (2018); Exotics (2018); The Inbetweeners (2021); Angry Black Girl Syndrome (2024). Marillier advocates mental health in acting, lives in Paris.

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Bibliography

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Fraser, N. (2017) ‘Raw: Eating, Feeling, Fucking’, Film Quarterly, 70(3), pp. 58-65.

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Huber, L. (2022) Body Genre: The Making of the French Sex-Horror Film. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Ramsey, L. (2021) ‘Titane: How Julia Ducournau Turned Car Sex Into Palme d’Or Glory’, Variety, 16 July. Available at: https://variety.com/2021/film/global/titane-julia-ducournau-palm-dor-1235012345/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

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