This film appeared on my radar quite some time back because I hesitated over watching it due to its excessive gore. After a friend recommended it, we finally watched it and indeed this is so much blood and mutilation in it. But it’s also completely different from what I expected being a kind of science-fiction horror movie instead of a serial killer movie. I don’t really like it but I do have to admit it is a very unique and memorable film with strong themes of body dysmorphia and self-harm.
A car accident when she was a child leaves Alexia with a titanium plate permanently implanted in her head. As a young woman, she works as a showgirl for motor shows and continues to exhibit a weird lust for cars. When an overenthusiastic fan uses force on her, she retaliates with a long metal hairpin through his ear, killing him. After that she seemingly has sex with a car and we see from the news that this is probably not the first person she has killed. When she realizes that she is pregnant in the house of a co-worker, she freaks out and starts killing everyone in the house. On the run and with a sketch of her face released to the public, she hits on a unique to lie low. Seeing that she has some resemblance to a boy who went missing ten years ago, she alters her appearance to look like him. The boy’s father, Vincent, a fire captain, accepts her as his son and thus begins another strange turn in a very strange film.
It took a while for me to understand that this is not at all a film about realistic trauma or fetish. That’s why I also missed details like how the fluid coming out of Alexia’s vagina is supposed to be motor oil not blood. That does help explain why Vincent doesn’t realize that his son Adrian is actually a woman and a heavily pregnant one at that, on top of him being a psychological need to believe that his son has returned. I appreciate that the film does try to avoid showing full on gore but still gets the visceral nature of the pain across just fine. It’s impossible not to wince or perhaps avert your eyes as Alexia tries to deliberately break her own nose and the damage to her own body keeps accumulating as she subjects herself to more and more abuse. It turns out that Vincent abuses his own body albeit in a different, overdosing himself on steroids to maintain his muscles despite his age. This film is certainly peak body horror for those who are into this sort of thing, which I am not, and in any case makes it a film that stands out easily from any other.
Thematically the film explores several fetishes and fears at the same time, not just one. Whether since birth or getting that titanium plate implant, Alexia seems to have difficulty emotionally connecting to other people but seems attracted to motor vehicles instead. I know that a number of other films have tried exploring this as well but I can’t really understand this fetish. Other themes like both Alexia and Vincent being unable to accept the changes their bodies are going through, and being willing to suffer through enormous pain and self-harm to undo these changes, are easier to relate to. Similarly his willful blindness to the fact the Alexia is not Adrian makes him sympathetic but that too turns to horror when we see how far he is willing to go to maintain that illusion.
Director Julia Ducournau previously made Raw which made a lasting impression on us due to its primal, visceral power. This one too is a horrifying and repulsive watch but I find it just too weird to really like. You can actually get into the head of the main character in Raw with even her aberrant addiction for the taste of human flesh but the character of Alexia is basically some kind of strange alien who is unable to really articulate what she really wants.