ALPHA reviewed by Katherine Stockton

ALPHA dives straight in and holds back. Alpha (Mélissa Boros), a 13-year-old schoolgirl, receives a tattoo at a house party from a dirty, shared needle. Good grief. However, as ALPHA reveals some more of its setting, we realise this inking merits well beyond the typical scare and grimace. Julia Ducournau’s film-world is one ravaged by a bloodborne disease that slowly but surely turns the infected to marble statues.  

Ducournau’s decision to hold back on how quickly she pans out is the film’s cleverest trick, retroactively reframing its first twenty minutes. At first, Alpha’s mother (Golshifteh Farahani) is patently unlikeable. Her reaction to Alpha’s tattoo positions her daughter as the problem rather than a victim of bodily violation – more frustrating given that we’ve seen Alpha incapacitated as the tattoo needle breaks her skin. However, as ALPHA lets us see more, we learn that “Maman” is a bereaved, overworked doctor whose colleagues performed a mass exodus. She reacts to her daughter’s vulnerability with the exacting bluntness of a doctor who has seen the consequences. Farahani’s performance throughout is tireless and extraordinary.

Alpha is, initially, strangely self-destructive and neglected without an obvious cause. But again, as ALPHA loosens its grip, we discover why. Alpha is a victim of generational familial abuse that is rendered irreconcilable by fear and grief. Emma Mackey’s removed flippancy as a nurse, jarring at first, slowly evolves into a study of desensitisation in the face of inescapable tragedy. Everything is dying. Ducournau’s restraint forces us into an exercise in growing forgiveness towards those who are still living and flawed.

ALPHA is Ducournau’s third feature, following the successes of Raw and Titane: films that combine provocative body horror with examinations of hard to accept – and hard to film – aspects of femininity. ALPHA is an obvious allegory for the AIDS crisis. While it continues Ducournau’s signature style of New French Extremity, the deliberate discomfort is compromised by heavy-handed symbolism. The marble imagery didactically explains to us that diseases are not sites of shame – agreed. But its depictions also seem to want us to revere this “beautiful” affliction as sacred: it transforms the dying into statues from antiquity. The red dust that buffets the lens foregrounds an apocalyptic theme, culminating in an overblown ending sequence from cinematographer Ruben Impens that references the biblical destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Red dust rains like God’s fire and sulphur. There is even a dusty disintegration in a direct nod to Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt.

Though ALPHA’s metaphors over-signal, the human reactions to tragedy do not. Alongside Farahani’s toxic heroism and Mackey’s cool flippancy, Boros’ performance is heartbreaking. An overused descriptor, but the best fit for Boros’ portrayal of teenage naivety and bravery as Alpha yearns to become herself in a world burdened with the processes of unbecoming. Tahar Rahim’s screen presence spits and crackles as Alpha’s dying, heroin-addicted uncle Amin. Rahim portrays corrosive self-disgust alongside an endless wellspring of love for the family Amin longs to abandon for the relief death might bring. Ducournau’s writing and the cast’s performances yield a film that still devastates.