It appears that the surge of high-level AIDS allegories at film festivals might be a response to the unexpected impact of COVID-19. Reflecting on past experiences can help us understand, and it seems that this previous pandemic served as a stark reminder for artists. The lessons learned from how we handled that crisis have guided us in dealing with subsequent outbreaks more compassionately.
Debuting in competition at the Cannes Film Festival two years following “Titane’s” win of the Palme d’Or, Julia Ducournau’s “Alpha” is one of three science fiction films showing at this year’s event that use a fictional, symbolic disease to explore the pain and loss of the AIDS crisis. Other films in this category include “The Plague” and “The Enigmatic Gaze of the Flamingo”. Additionally, there are other recent art-house movies such as “Fairyland”, “All of Us Strangers”, and “Jimpa.” Among these films, “Alpha” is arguably the most challenging to watch. It tells the story of a 13-year-old girl (Mélissa Boros) who returns home from a party with a homemade tattoo, and the movie is both straightforwardly explicit yet confusingly vague in its narrative.
How was the needle? Was it sanitized or not? Golshifteh Farahani, portraying Alpha’s mother, is desperate to know this, her thoughts spiraling back to the virus that transformed her brother Amin (played by Tahar Rahim), a former drug addict, into a lifeless statue approximately eight years ago. This specific illness has such effects, causing its victims to expel chalky dust as their bodies gradually petrify. Alpha was only 5 when Amin contracted the disease, and now she barely recalls him, mixing her memories (depicted in reddish gold) with the anxious scenes of her current virus concern, which are tinted blue. These memories seem like “dreams within dreams,” as a poem Alpha listens to in English class puts it.
Concerned that her daughter might have contracted the disease, Alpha’s mom – a dedicated medical professional specializing in treating this blood-borne illness – quickly takes her to the clinic for tetanus injections and blood work. However, it was the late ’90s, which meant they had to wait several weeks for a more precise diagnosis. During this time, most of Alpha’s classmates at school seemed to believe she was sick… but what could have led them to this conclusion? While HIV can be transmitted via infected needles, I don’t recall people being shunned for getting tattoos in the ’90s.
Ducournau’s film “Alpha” can be seen as a continuation of her body-horror genre, which includes previous works like “Raw” (dealing with the acceptance of cannibalism) and “Titane” (exploring the acceptance of inner monstrosity). Unlike these films, “Alpha” stands out because its protagonist is still pre-pubescent, not an adolescent. She has a classmate named Adrien (played by Louai El Amrousy), whom she considers her boyfriend to some extent, but Alpha refuses to engage in sexual activities with him. However, Adrien lacks the maturity to support her at school, and he is involved with another girl as well.
It’s not as commonly recognized, but French-speaking actors Farahani (“Paterson”) and Rahim (“A Prophet”) are incredibly talented performers of their generation. Director Ducournau pushes them to their limits in this film, with Rahim having to lose a significant amount of weight – his transformation is comparable to Joaquin Phoenix’s for “Joker” – and Farahani portraying a sister who persists despite her lost-cause loved one taking his own life right before her eyes.
It’s disappointing to witness exceptional actors invest so deeply into roles that are rather typical, even bordering on clichés within American independent film standards. The movie appears to touch upon themes like addiction or AIDS, but it’s not entirely clear if Alpha is grappling with a fear of contagion or the excessive weight of her mother’s worries. During a hospital visit, she encounters her English teacher (Finnegan Oldfield) and his infected partner in the waiting room, displaying the compassion that director Ducournau hopes to evoke from us. However, it seems unfair for Alpha to be the only one who understands what’s transpired when later she sees him crying in class.
Alpha expresses to his mother, “I’m too young for this!” This sentiment, which the audience has likely shared throughout the movie, implies that it’s unfair to burden a 13-year-old with such responsibility. The opening shot of the film, which zooms out from the track marks on Amin’s arm, reveals a 5-year-old child named Alpha tracing something resembling a constellation onto his skin using a marker. When asked what he had caught, Alpha responds, “I’ve caught something,” and opens his hand to show a ladybug. However, if you catch the hidden meaning, you are two hours ahead of a film that frequently returns to this scene.
In “Raw” and “Titane,” director Julia Ducournau challenged viewers to peer into the grim, decaying recesses of our inner selves, but such exploration feels unjustified when a child, or for that matter, a child actor, is depicted weeping beside the lifeless body of their loved one. And how are we to interpret chaotic sequences like the one where Amin violently pulls Alpha from bed and plunges her into a harrowing trip fueled by Nick Cave’s “The Mercy Seat”? Ducournau’s overpowering sound design leaves us gasping, skillfully recreating the oppressive paranoia of the ’90s, an era where bullies hurled homophobic insults and a single instance of bleeding in a public pool could spark widespread fear. As an admirer, I find this exploration both captivating and unsettling.
Instead of the graphic depiction of HIV transmission seen in “Kids” by Larry Clark, the portrayal in “Raw” by Julia Ducournau is less disturbing, but still unsettling due to a scene involving condoms given Alpha’s young age. A more impactful approach might have been to address AIDS directly instead of using a metaphorical process where flesh turns into marble and then disintegrates into dust. In the end, this fantastical fossilization process is so aesthetically pleasing that it unexpectedly softens the terror preceding it, offering a cathartic image to conclude Ducournau’s dark narrative.
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2025-05-20 01:17