WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Raw, Titane, and Alpha.
French Extremity is not for the faint of heart. Often described as films about violence rather than violent films, the European phenomenon is expressly political while maintaining an earthy verisimilitude which distinguishes it from the salacious gore of the Torture Porn subgenre that arose alongside it.
While the original New French Extremity movement emerged shortly before the turn of the 21st century, it seems we’re in the midst of a renaissance. More recent entries are not only helmed by female creators, but they also feature inherently feminist stories.
Arguably sparking this second wave is Julia Ducournau. The writer/director made waves at the 2011 Cannes International Film Festival with Junior, a graphic short film that follows a teenage girl who sheds her skin like a reptile. Subsequent features would continue to explore this theme of grotesque metamorphosis while deconstructing some of our oldest taboos. The daughter of a gynecologist and a dermatologist, Ducournau often locates her stories’ horror within the female body.
Her 2016 feature debut, Raw, is a cannibal coming-of-age tale, while her sophomore outing, 2021’s Titane — which won the festival’s coveted Palme d’Or — follows a young woman impregnated by a muscle car. Her latest feature, Alpha, sees a mother and daughter torn apart by a virus that converts human bodies to stone. Each follows a stoic female protagonist who must negotiate her place in a callous world.
Though not connected by character or plot (albeit with similar naming conventions), these films combine to explore the symbolic transitions of female life. Often known as the triple goddess, this cycle includes the maiden: a naive idealist entering womanhood, the mother: a selfless nurturer who sacrifices her body to create the next generation, and the crone: an aging woman gradually releasing her connection to society while passing on her wisdom to the maiden. While this trio is rooted in femininity, each persona should be viewed as a figurative representation of the human experience accessible to all, regardless of biology.
In fact, Ducournau’s work serves to deconstruct gender-based tropes, breathing life into rigid archetypes. Each film centers on a painful transformation in which a female character rips through these socially accepted limitations, challenging the audience to shed our own stifling skins and reveal true humanity in the visceral mess.
Raw (2016)
Ducournau’s first feature film centers on one of the oldest cinematic taboos. Justine (Garance Marillier) is a strict vegetarian entering her first year of study at a prestigious veterinary school. Arriving on campus, she reunites with her rebellious older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf), now a popular upperclassman. Doused in blood as part of a barbaric hazing week, Justine must also partake in an annual sort of communion by eating a raw sliver of rabbit meat. This act of consumption triggers an insatiable desire for human flesh as she shakes off her parents’ restrictive values to explore her burgeoning womanhood.
After choking down the uncooked chunk, Justine’s body erupts in a horrific rash, her skin peeling off in itchy strips. Compulsively chewing on her own hair, she’s surprised to also find herself craving meat and must abandon the moral high ground of her vegetarian upbringing. This new oral fixation begins to merge with an awakening appetite for carnal pleasure, and Justine discovers that she can only achieve sexual gratification by biting into human skin. But the story’s true turning point comes when Alexia accidentally severs her finger during a botched bikini wax. As her older sister passes out with shock, Justine pops the severed digit into her mouth, chewing and swallowing before she can consider what she’s just done.
The sisters cover for each other, and we learn that Alexia has struggled with her own cannibalistic urges. But rather than bite her sexual partners, she’s been satiating her bloodlust by causing accidents on an isolated stretch of country road, then eating the drivers as they die in the wreckage. It’s not until she kills and gorges herself on Justine’s roommate that the sisters’ dark secret comes to light.
After visiting Alexia in prison, Justine’s father reveals the source of this taboo trait, lifting his shirt to reveal extensive bite marks and scars. We realize that her mother, known only as La mère (Joana Preiss), is also a cannibal, her own bite a form of sexual release. She has kept this practice secret from her daughters, dooming them to stigma and ostracization.
Ducournau should be commended for not aligning Justine’s sexual exploration with romantic connection. Aside from anonymous hookups and experimentation with her queer roommate, she has no emotional attachment to a boyfriend and engages in sexual acts solely for her own pleasure. But left to navigate this tricky transformation on her own, Justine is dangerous to her sexual partners, while Alexia is a serial murderer. Both are cast out of their community for failing to embody feminine norms, and cannibalism becomes a metaphor for the vilification of sexually liberated women in a patriarchal world.
Titane (2021)
Ducournau’s second feature explores the transition to motherhood through the lens of gender nonconformity. This complex story follows Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a motor show dancer with a titanium plate in her skull, the result of a childhood car accident. It seems this augmentation has sparked an affection for metal, and we watch as Alexia has a sexual encounter with a strangely anthropomorphized car. Days later, she’s horrified to learn that she’s pregnant and attempts an agonizing self-abortion.
But her stomach continues to itch and expand, her womb leaking motor oil. As Alexia’s delicate condition progresses, so does her urge to kill. She brutally attacks her new girlfriend, then winds up killing everyone else in the house. These unprovoked attacks feel like an outward manifestation of rage over losing control of her body and the growing fetus she can’t terminate.
Hoping to evade the police, Alexia cuts ties to her former life. On a whim, she poses as Adrien, a young man who’s been missing since he was a boy. To complete this metamorphosis, she cuts her long, bleach-blond hair, shaves off her eyebrows, and viciously smashes her feminine nose. With her breasts and belly tightly bound, she’s able to pass for the long-lost Adrien and accompanies his father Vincent (Vincent Lindon) back to his firehouse home. The well-respected station chief introduces Alexia/Adrien to his trainees, who quickly clock the prodigal son’s deception. But Vincent will not be deterred.
In a rare moment of beautiful honesty, he reassures the frightened imposter, “I don’t care who you are. You’re my son. You’ll always be my son.” Unlike Alexia’s own cruel father — whose disdain caused her devastating accident — Vincent is offering unconditional love, and Alexia’s urge to kill fades away. This unflinching devotion also hints at atonement for Vincent’s previous failure to support Adrien’s gender fluidity.
Despite their growing emotional connection, both Alexia and Vincent continue performing traditional gender norms. To maintain his alpha dominance, Vincent injects hormones each night before putting his body through grueling exercise. Alexia continues to painfully wrap her belly and breasts, creating angry lacerations on her expanding torso. Eventually, this itchy skin splits to reveal a titanium womb lurking beneath. In a brutal delivery scene, the baby bursts through Alexia’s abdomen, and she bleeds to death on the floor. After desperately trying to escape her feminized body, pregnancy has literally torn her apart.
Ducournau provides hope as a byproduct of this tragedy. Failing to save the new mother’s life, Vincent cradles the infant to his own chest, unbothered by its titanium spine. Though tragic, Alexia’s physical body has given way to a new evolution of maternal love. No longer bound by traditional gender norms, Vincent finds peace in nurturing this extraordinary child.
Alpha (2025)
Ducournau’s third film completes this transformative trilogy by exploring the relationship between a mother and her growing child. The story follows Alpha (Mélissa Boros), a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her single mother, a doctor known only as Maman (Golshifteh Farahani). When Alpha gets a tattoo with a dirty needle, she exposes herself to a mysterious virus that slowly petrifies the human body.
Victims cough out clouds of chalky dust while a spiderweb of marbleization slowly petrifies their limbs. Through flashbacks to Alpha’s childhood, we learn that Maman’s brother Amin (Tahar Rahim) also suffers from the dreaded disease, a result of intravenous drug use. One devastating sequence shows Maman collecting a sample for biopsy and accidentally ripping out half of her brother’s back, his flesh shattering into a pile of rocks.
While Alpha waits for her test results, Amin returns to his sister’s home, seeking care and a safe place to stay. Cast out by society, his suffering mirrors Alpha’s own brutal treatment at the hands of ignorant classmates who view her body as dangerous. Even the school administration supports this bullying after several bleeding incidents turn her into a pariah. A clear allegory for the AIDS epidemic, Amin becomes an untouchable, shunned by everyone but his sister and others suffering from the disease. Though he clings to his humanity, the virus slowly turns him into a spectacle, a marbleized statue frozen in time.
We eventually learn that Amin died of the virus long ago, his ghostly return triggered by Alpha’s own exposure. While the titular teen may be our protagonist, Maman becomes the story’s heart. Finally forced to reckon with her inability to cure Amin, she must find a way to let her daughter go. She realizes that her love has morphed into hypervigilance and a self-sabotaging need to protect and control. A heartbreaking conclusion sees Maman let go of Amin’s ghost as he dissipates in a storm of swirling red wind. Alpha watches this devastating scene, completing the cycle of feminine experience.
As the crone, Maman will take the wisdom from her brother’s final days and use it to guide her relationship with Alpha, who is nearing her own feminine transformation. But unlike Justine’s La mère, she will not allow her daughter to pass through this treacherous conversion alone.
Though their stories differ in tone and plot, Justine, Alexia, and Alpha share an observant stoicism as they navigate their respective worlds. Shunned by their communities, they eventually reach their turning points and reject the stereotypes of female life. They rip, tear, and shatter these gender norms and, by proxy, allow us to challenge our own understanding of womanhood.
While we may not be having cannibal sex, pregnant with a titanium child, or watching our bodies turn to stone, we identify with these mostly silent characters and challenge our own conformity. Does the skin we wear reflect who we truly are, or is it an external creation handed down by generations of patriarchal conditioning?
Ducournau presents each metamorphosis as a violent reclamation of the flesh and blood humanity we all hide beneath a protective shell.
