Directed By Julia Ducournau

Starring – Melissa Boros, Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani

The Plot – In the 1980s, in the port city of Le Havre, Alpha (Boros) is the only child of a young doctor working in a sealed hospital ward with patients infected by a virus. Thirteen years old, she is shunned by her classmates amid rumors that she carries a new disease. When she comes home from school with a tattoo of the letter “A” on her arm, her mother is devastated, fearing what illness her daughter may have caught from the tattoo needle. Her brother Amin, HIV-positive, is a hopeless drug addict with arms covered in needle marks. Alpha’s tattoo begins to bleed more and more frequently, and the attacks against her at school intensify.

Rated R for drug content, sexual material, adult language and some underage drinking

ALPHA – Official Trailer – In Theaters March 27

POSITIVES

Like Ducournau’s previous films, Raw, and the criminally underrated Titane, there’s an underlining meaning of messaging that beats at this movie’s metaphorical execution that attains an abundance of necessary heart for the explorational journey alongside these characters, and while I feel like there’s evidence to support that Julia’s observational outlook lent itself to the AIDS epidemic that became a universal crisis for the established setting, there’s surprisingly an open-ended ambiguity to the material that one could argue is equally about drugs or even the Covid-19 pandemic. These incremental aspects flourish in the familiarity of imagery and actions from its characters, particularly while articulating an isolation factor in distancing for those affected with this bloodborne disease that travels from person to person without a defined path of passage, as a means of conjuring the fear of the unknown that permeated like bedlam with misinformation fueling paranoia, however this and the movie’s extensive scope towards earning itself an ensemble piece designation, allows the glaringly evidential focus of Ducournau’s screenplay to transpire in a matter of key aspects pertaining to sexual interaction and one glaring red flag involving a tattoo specifically with the letter “A” branded to those ailing victims, and considering Alpha’s narrative is built around a family dynamic with so many internalized secrets between them, we start to get a greater sense of understanding towards AIDS affecting so many more people than just those diagnosed with the incurable, breeding an ample amount of empathy and uncertainty to their everyday lives that attains the same kind of unpredictability that drove Julia’s previous films. Being that Ducournau is among the most fearless filmmakers working today, the film does take an abundance of creative and stylistic chances, particularly in its overly saturated cinematography rendering an atmospheric hopelessness to the plagued, that will directly divide audiences in their preconceived expectations of what the film should be, but I found most of the filmmaking choices to attain symbolic meaning and depth to a screenplay with more misses than hits, especially the make-up and prosthetics designs here conjuring an uncontrollable deterioration to its bodily horror sensibilities, as well as the unfiltered accessibility of so many tenderly vulnerable moments in the life of this 15-year-old titular protagonist that did lay the ground work for this film’s eventual coming-of-age deviation that sprung completely out of nowhere. Considering the opening shot involves Alpha’s tattoo being inscribed upon her by an anything-but-certified artist, there’s an immediately established sense of disconcerting dread that kept me on edge for the two hour duration of this movie’s runtime, an unshakeable aspect doubled down affirmatively by the moral ambiguity that surrounds this drug-addicted uncle, and Alpha’s concerning restlessness to be required to spend so much time with him, within the claustrophobic confines of her bedroom. This is where the movie really distances itself from the specificity of horror that enhanced Julia’s previous films, instead opting for more of a slice of life family drama that unearths some legitimately sweet and sentimentally strong sequences that work in the movie’s favor, offering prime examples of the suffering humanity from within that attain stakes to a movie so defined by exaggerated imagination, especially those artistically ambitious sequences of Alpha’s panic attacks that illustrate the unshakeable grip that restless mind has towards effectively dividing fantasy from reality. On top of all of this, the film is aided tremendously by impeccably emotional performances from everyone across the board, though it’s ultimately the spellbinding naturality of Melissa Boros and Golshifteh Farahani that do the heavy lifting. Farahani grounds the film with the kind of effortlessly weary compassion and dependable stoicism for her daughter and brother that feel like a warming breath of fresh air to so much atmospheric devastation, made absolutely crippling by a late third act twist that recontextualizes every one of her meaningful efforts, and Boros, while making up for in raw and unflinching vulnerability for what she lacks in experience, unpacks a simultaneously angsty and affectionate turn that helps to overcome some of the limitations of her inconsistent characterization, without anything even closely resembling the timidness and imposition of a second time actress.

NEGATIVES

While Alpha does scratch the proverbial itch of attaching compelling components to a story shrouded in deep meanings and layered subtext, there’s a sense of tediousness in the overabundance of its creative outlining that keeps so much about it from effectively sticking the landing, such as a strangely unnecessary structural outline between dual timelines that not only complicates what should be an effortlessly easy and engaging story to tell, but also takes so much attention away from the fluidity of the storytelling, which crosses abrupt speedbumps of deviation ever-increasingly, the longer that the film drifts into its second hour. I don’t necessarily have a problem with a non-linear structure if it serves a greater and grander purpose to the storytelling, but too much time away from the current day arc, where a majority of the movie rests its foundational consistency upon, omits with it too much materialized stress and tension away from the urgency of the proceedings, especially with transitional edits lacking any semblance of visual clarity or coherence to flesh out when a shift is taking shape, and while I wholeheartedly understand that Julia’s artistic intention was to blend the past with the present, in ways that immerse us in the nightmarish traumas of these characters, it comes at the cost of a less-than-impactful resolution that raises more questions than necessary answers, leaving me wondering how much better that this film would inevitably be if it didn’t implore artistic indulgences, especially those that feel so repeatedly compromising to a majority of movies that adopt it. In addition to a clumsily erratic structure, the horror-first designation that categorizes the film, as well as Ducournau’s involvement, sets a series of reasonable expectations for the project that should’ve entailed with it the kind of thrills, chills, or even carnage candy that satisfied a built-in audience of her most loyal enthusiasts, but instead produces what is easily her most expressionless and restrained direction, more than a decade into her promising career. When you consider that this is a pandemic movie that subverts those expectations into a grander picture about the AIDS epidemic, the gruesomely gory and bone-chilling imagery practically writes itself, especially with such a fearless filmmaker like Ducournau at its expense, and while the aforementioned make-up and prosthetics designs do make these victims feel like life-sucking zombies plagued by a frailty of bodily cavities that continuously deteriorate before our eyes, there’s very little in the focus of the overall narrative that flourishes such a beneficial meaning to their tragic transformation, instead feeling like periodic obligations to the bullet-point intentions of the studio, rather than creatively conveying a deeper meaning into the unshakeable grip that such a disease had during a time when medicinal advancements were nowhere near realistic, without anything even closely resembling the filmmaker who once utilized cannibalism to unleash against the constraints and power dynamics against women’s bodies. In addition, the pacing for the movie increasingly drags to a screeching halt, particularly throughout a couple of noteworthy sequences that certainly belong in the movie, but transpire a bit longer than necessary to hammer home their noteworthy intention. Two such examples pertain a family dinner scene involving an abundance of expendable dialogue to pad its runtime, as well as the aforementioned panic attack sequence, two integral scenes to the family-first foundation at the movie’s forefront, but the kind ultimately in need of a great editor to make them flourish with the kind of elevating synergy that work in maintaining vested interests to the scenes that follow them. Considering this is a movie that runs tiringly at the two hour mark, it does begin to feel evident how repetitive some of these sequences feel in their laboriously exhausting execution, especially in that they say everything that they’re going to say within the first two minutes of their inclusion, and though the acting helps to bring individualism to the candidness of these conversations, the dialogue isn’t exactly expressing anything remotely profound or subtle about the movie’s thematic impulses, leaving me wishing for an air-tight 105- minute finished product that could’ve maintained a majority of its audience throughout occasional interactions that feel sluggishly saturated by too much overindulgence

OVERALL
Alpha proves that five years away from the public limelight didn’t exactly amount to a thoughtfully rich and cohesively layered experience for Julia Ducournau’s third film, with eviscerated ambition from a tediously unnecessary framing device that takes away too much focus from the importance of the underlining subtext. Despite the film’s flaws, the tenderly intimate angling of Ducournau’s sprawling storytelling does surmise an earnestly endearing element of awareness to family drama that spans from authentically raw performances and meaningfully enriching symbolism, offering just enough imaginatively provocative creativity to overcome its detracting components, spinning out more of the same divisive projects from the director, but for reasons you could’ve never expected

My Grade: 6.1 or C