Julia Ducournau

Best films:
, /10

Julia Ducournau (France, 1983) directed the horror movie Raw (2016). A car crashes against a tree on a deserted road to avoid a pedestrian who is lying on the road. Justine/Juju and her parents are having lunch when Justine finds meat in her dish. Her mother goes to complain: they are lifelong vegetarians. Her parents drive her to her new veterinary school. She is woken up in the middle of the night by masked thugs who are older students staging a silly hazing ritual. That's how she meetsher roommate Adrien, who is not a girl but a gay. All the new students are locked in a room and then forced to crawl. But then the joke turns into a wild dance party. Justine is trying to leave when she meets her older sister Alexia, who is attending the same school and is dancing drunk. Alexia takes her to a dark room that has old pictures of previous generations of students, and shows her a group picture of when their mother was studying there. The following day, after the first class, the older students assemble all the new students and pour blood on them. All the new students are forced to eat raw rabbit kidney. Justine refuses because she's vegetarian. Alexia insists that Justine eats and eventually stuffs one into her mouth. Over lunch she sits at a table where kids discuss raping monkeys and she argues that raping a monkey is as bad as raping a woman. The new students take their first written test still stained with blood all over their faces. At night she cannot sleep because her body itches. She turns on the light and discovers an ugly rash spreading all over her body. She scratches her skin violently and eventually falls asleep. She dreams of a horse galopping on a treadmill. In the morning she visits a doctor who asks her about her sex life. Justine confesses that she is still a virgin. The doctor diagnoses food poisoning. A bully tells her that she needs a different kind of clothes for that day. Alexia lends her something and high-heel shoes, which Justine doesn't know how to handle. At the dorm she finds that the students have thrown out all the furniture and ask to rescue her mattress. When she enters her room, she finds that Adrien is having oral sex with a male lover. At lunch she can't resist and steals a meat burger. The girl at the register sees her and insists that she pays for it. Adrien is puzzled that she tried to steal food. They take a bus together and pass by the site of the car accident, where police are examining the wreckage. They stop at a restaurant where Justine can eat meat without being seen by the others. A teacher is hostile to her, who came with great credentials. She eats her own hair and later she vomits them. In the morning she opens the refrigerator and eats chicken without even cooking it. She spends the night with Alexia who tries to teach her how to pee standing up. Justine then sleeps at Alexia's place and sees that Alexia is using the same cream that the doctor prescribed for the rash. In the morning Alexia wants to remove Justine's pelvic hair but accidentally severes one of her own fingers. Alexia faints. Justine frantically calls for help but then, while she waits, she can't resist and starts eating the severed finger. Alexia wakes up and sees her. Alexia is taken to the hospital where their parents join then. Alexia tells them that the dog ate the finger. When the parents leave, Alexia takes Justine for a walk. They reach the deserted road and Alexia suddenly jumps in front of a car, causing the car to crash against a tree. Alexia survives but the occupants of the car are dead. Justine can't look at them, but Alexia instead starts eating the passenger. Justine walks back to the school alone. The following day during class Adrien watches Justine perform an autopsy on a god. Later she watches him play soccer shirtless. She salivates. She gets dressed for a party and this time she wants to look sexy. Before going to the party she lies in bed and has violent convulsions under the sheets. The moment she enters the party she is forced into a new hazing ritual: they throw blue paint all over her and lock her in a room with a boy who is covered in yellow paint, and the game consists in rubbing against each other until the paints mix and turn green. The boy starts kissing her and she bites his lip until she gets a piece in her mouth. The boy runs out of the room screaming. Back in her dorm room, she offers herself naked to Adrien and they have passionate sex. That's how she loses her virginity. Justine goes wild and tries to bite Adrien, but then bites her own arm until it starts bleeding. The following day Adrien doesn't walk to talk to her. As Justine insists, Adrien shouts that he is gay in front of everybody who is around them. In the evening she gets drunk at a party and Alexia takes her home. The following morning at class the other students avoid her. Adrien shows her a video that is going viral of her at the morgue, crawling like a dog and trying to eat a corpse while other students are watching and Alexia is making fun of her. Justine walks out, looks for Alexia and attacks her. They fight like cannibals, while the other students are filming the scene, until they get separated by the school's staff. But later they lovingly cure each other's injuries. The following morning Justine, still bleeding from a cheek, wakes up in Adrien's bed. She realizes that he is dead, and that most his right leg has been eaten. She turns the body and sees that he was stabbed in the back. She then looks for who else was there with them, and finds Alexia sitting on the kitchen floor with blood all over her mouth. Justine undresses Alexia and drags her into the shower to clean the blood. Alexia is sent to jail for the murder. Justine returns home to her parents. Her father, while smoking a cigarette in her face, reveals that the cannibalism is in her mother's genes: he opens his shirt and shows all his scars, with chunks of flesh missing.
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