In Alpha’s opening sequence, the title of the film emerges as cracks in a crumbling orange terrain, struggling to break through. This foretells the journey of 12-year-old Alpha; a tenacious young girl whose family is steeped in grief and despair.
Julia Ducournau’s third feature, which premiered at Cannes, is less a visual, sensory spectacle than her previous films Raw and Titane, the latter of which took home the prestigious Palme D’Or. Gone is the visceral body horror and relentless pacing that the visionary director has become known for. Here, Ducournau opts for a story both sprawling and soft — but if you’re willing to dredge through the swirling sands, it is just as complex and impactful as her previous offerings.
The film begins with Alpha, played with awkward but endearing nuance by Mélissa Boros, receiving a tattoo from a used needle. It’s an act that incites an understandable panic from her doctor mother, who immediately has her tested for “the virus”—an illness that apparently turns its victims to stone.
Flashbacks to the virus’s endemic peak 7 years earlier show Alpha’s mother caring for the overwhelming number of patients under her care alongside Emma Mackey’s nurse. Parallels to the AIDs virus epidemic are visible in queer patients and frightened hospital staff, but not central to Alpha’s story. This leaves any greater ideas around infection feeling a fair bit undercooked, if you’re seeking an AIDs allegory.
The visual effects of the infected, meanwhile, border on Doctor Who monsters, mildly cartoonish and somewhat disappointingly free of gore, but their minimal stone facades are symbolic of Ducournau’s reflections on time. As perpetually frozen statues, they cannot move on or change along with the world around them.
Ducournau explores time as both theme and filmmaking convention in Alpha, with multiple narratives, marked by distinctly polar color palettes, slowly converging and distorting the audience’s perception of events. The film really kicks into gear with the introduction of Amin — an uncle Alpha barely remembers who crashes their apartment, searching for drugs. Amin is an addict, but a beloved brother nonetheless whose presence is embraced by Alpha’s mother.
Both Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Ramin give spectacular performances in their respective roles as sister and brother. Ramin particularly brings an immense physicality in his portrayal of addiction that is mesmerizing to watch.
And Alpha is far from the first time that Ducournau has focused on family. Familial relationships are the through line that ground all of her films. As with Raw and Titane it’s the realistic chemistry between performers and weight felt in these relationships that are one of Alpha’s greatest successes. It’s easy to imagine these characters outside of the confines of the film, sharing meals and mindlessly bickering.
The film’s main issue is in establishing its protagonist. Initially, this is Alpha’s story. The early scenes are from her perspective and the state of her infection appears to be the main hook. On the face of it, Alpha’s school life is the most interesting aspect of the film, if only because it’s the most obvious, but this story of an ostracized teen facing ridicule at school is not ultimately what takes center stage.
Alpha is an observer of her mother — who is curiously never given a name — and it becomes increasingly clear that it’s her mother’s perspective on the events of the film that hold the most significance. Unfortunately, splitting the narrative between mother and daughter does weaken many of the film’s revelations.
Alpha’s mother carries with her the trauma of caring for Amin – first from his heroin addiction, then his subsequent infection with the virus – into her parenthood. At its heart, Alpha is the story of a mother unable to stop her past and her habitual need to care and protect from poisoning the way she parents.
A scene early in the film sees Alpha and Amin watching The Adventures of Baron Munchausen on television. It’s brief and inconsequential but not insignificant, serving as a clue to the mother’s inclination toward munchausen-by-proxy; a compulsion in which people fabricate illness in others. Munchausen-by-proxy, while a form of abuse, is often driven by a compulsion to care, to be needed. We see this in Alpha’s mother’s resistance to accepting Alpha is not sick; her mother is so used to the way she cared for Amin and her patients that she mimics it with Alpha. Out of fear and habit she is unable to believe that Alpha might just be okay. Ducournau handles this condition with much more tenderness than other media portrayals that simply cast overbearing mothers as monsters.
The obsession of Alpha’s mother with her daughter’s health is never played for shock, but presented with conflict both internal and external, a trial encountered as a result of genuine love. As the mother’s inclinations become clearer, an argument between her and Amin about their own mother’s fanciful beliefs and the resulting treatment of his addictions weave in more gut-punching layers. All forms of protection seem mad when you don’t understand them, and perhaps all are futile in the end.
The idea of repeated behaviors and parallel lives is prevalent throughout the film, illustrated beautifully in a sequence in which Alpha and Amin’s physical contortions are perfectly synced, and another in with they hug so tightly they almost seem to merge. These early moments hint at the mother’s view of Amin and Alpha as one, unable to disentangle her sense of failure in protecting her brother from various illnesses from the ferociousness and paranoia with which she cares for her daughter.
They are the cycle she is bound in as career – unable to let one die and inadvertently preventing the other from living. In this the film finds its central thesis. At its worst, Alpha’s multiple protagonists, timelines and themes dilute each other, muddying the path to a greater message. At its best they culminate to tell a story of love — the love of a mother and sister so powerful that it teeters into control, but triumphs when that control is finally relinquished. All throughout, each action sewn into the story is motivated by this love, and the film’s climax is deeply emotional because of this.
It ends with a new beginning, emerging from the blistering red wind.
It may not be a crowd-pleaser if Cannes audiences are anything to go by, but with lingering expectations of gore and garishness established by Ducournau’s most applauded films stripped away, Alpha proves itself to be a profound meditation on what it means to care for others and the traps this creates.
Director: Julia Ducournau Writer: Julia Ducournau Stars: Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani, Mélissa Boros, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield, Louai El Amrousy Release date: May 19, 2025 (Cannes)
Rachel Barker is a film critic and horror youtuber based in Melbourne found at rachellydiab/ Girl On Film on all platforms.
