Four years ago, French director Julia Ducournau won the Palme d’Or for her delightfully shocking film тιтane with its story about grinding metal and gyrating bodies. Now, she returns to the Cannes with Compeтιтion film Alpha, a much more personal project that has her usual hallmarks of body horror while digging deeper into an emotional story about family.
Ducournau has a lot on her mind with Alpha, which, on its surface, is a tale about the AIDs epidemic (to use the word allegory here would discount the way Ducournau looks the subject so boldly in the face). In this film’s version of France, a disease has swept the country, turning those who get sick into marble-like statues as their illness progresses. Though Alpha is overwhelmed by its thematic concerns, Ducournau still creates arresting imagery in the harsh color palate and dystopic world she depicts. Along with absolutely stunning performances, Alpha transcends its flaws to be another stunning, destined-to-be-divisive film from Ducournau.
Alpha Emotionally Grueling & Visually Stunning
Stunning Performances Ground A Bleak Story
The story of Alpha starts quite simply before expanding outward – its тιтle character (played with a fearless intensity by newcomer Mélissa Boros) is introduced at a party, drugged out of her mind as cigarette smoke floats around her and a nameless boy gives her a tattoo with a dirty needle. Ducournau zooms in on the needle piercing the skin slowly, black ink mixing with deep red blood. It’s the first of many startling images. When Alpha comes home and her mother (Golshifteh Farahani in the best performance of her career) spots her new tattoo, their world begins to shatter.
Alpha’s mother works at the local hospital and immediately brings her daughter in for testing, awaiting the results to see whether she has been infected by this unnamed disease. The ripple effects of Alpha’s potential infection spread out much farther than she expects, even before she receives her results. Suddenly, Alpha’s classmates want nothing to do with her, refusing to get into the pool to swim laps next to her or subtly shifting away from her when she enters classrooms and walks down the hallway.
It also begins to drive her mother a little bit mad – as her paranoia grows while waiting for her daughter’s test results, she resorts to believing in old supersтιтions pᴀssed on by her own mother, ones she used to vigorously denounce when brought up. She hopes to exorcise the Red Wind from Alpha, her fears of disease mixing with deep-seated scars. The Red Wind does physically manifest itself in the film – there are relentless gusts hitting their apartment building at night, shaking the rafters that surround the building like a skeleton.
Tahar Rahim gives a physical performance that is maybe more at home in a possession film than a drama…
The streets are also lined with red dirt and, in one scene, the wind picks up and clouds the entire area in scarlet dust. What’s real and what’s imagined in Alpha is consistently blurred and that’s where some of the film falls apart and loses track of its thematic concerns. It’s not enough to derail the film, but it’s a noticeable flaw.
Not so noticeable, though, against Alpha’s stunning cast. Alongside Boros and Farahani, Tahar Rahim gives a physical performance that is maybe more at home in a possession film than a drama, but that works because of this. Rahim contorts his body in an elegantly skeletal range of motion that, despite all the horror we see elsewhere, might be some of the most terrifying images in Alpha.
Alpha isn’t a scary film, though. There are moments of bone-chilling fear – watching this disease claim its victims, the anxiety of waiting for Alpha’s test results, and a few other moments that are best not spoiled. But all of this is underscored by a deep sadness that permeates the film in every aspect, from the way it’s lit (either bright orange or hollow blue-grays) to the way Alpha’s family is forced to reckon with all the disease that has come into their life, from addiction to the Red Wind and the unnamed one at the center of the film.
Some may find this despairing and baffling, but Ducournau finds a strange layer of hope and love beneath all the dust and grime. Regardless, that the director would follow up тιтane with such a personal and emotionally draining story proves that Ducournau is as fearless as the characters in her film, willing to go places no one else will. What she finds there may not be to everyone’s liking, but it’s certainly worth watching.
Alpha premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The film releases August 20 in theaters.
