RAW
I have a favorite ritual, where I show up at a cinema (usually independent, arty) and see whatever is playing next. No looking the film up, no trailers. Just pay, grab some popcorn, and wait for the lights to dim.
The first time I did this ritual with my daughter Zelda, we’d walked to an East Village arthouse in NYC and a film called Raw was playing next. The poster was nebulous - a teen girl’s face tilted upward with a trickle of blood snaking from her nose. Zelda was 13, and her head may as well have been a crystal ball because it was too easy to see inside as she stood there calculating what the next two hours in a mystery movie might be like. But the ritual must be upheld: go in clueless, go in now.
The trickle of blood certainly wasn’t an issue - I’d been showing her films like CARRIE from an early age, and reading Macbeth together before bed wasn’t unusual at all. But little did either of us know what a bloody, wild ride we were about to share in that dark theater. (And little did we know that we were on the cusp of making our own horror film that year - our family’s first - and it was this little punk’s idea.)
The film started rolling (Subtitles?! Hang in there, kid), the gore started flowing (rabbit kidneys, cow rectums, and finally finger lollipops )…. and we were both hooked. This story had teeth. This film had hunger. It had throbbing music and teen sex, it had sisterly hate and pure sisterly love. It screamed of otherness and isolation; initiation and discovery. It had violence, confusion; anarchy and acceptance. It was nasty and mean; it was funny and unforgiving. It begged for understanding while it begged for blood.
Ducournau is a master filmmaker. Her stories speak in a sharp tongue, and yet the narratives, painted in merciless strokes on a bumpy canvas, somehow always feel human in the most strange, brutal, and beautiful ways. That I was introduced to her work through this particular film (this diabolical, gorgeous, and unwavering film), doing the movie-going ritual I love the most (with one of the bright souls I love most on this whizzing orb, Zelda), makes RAW my favorite genre film so far of the 21st century.
Toby Poser