Julia Ducournau - Monograph of the flesh

« SHE’S NOT THERE»» — Mais qui êtes-vous, Julia Ducournau ?

She likes country music, cries in front of classic ballets, "amethyst" is tattooed on her left arm and a constellation on the right.Peroxidée, immense in its skirts, rock’n’roll post hypokhâgne-khâgne at Henri IV, 2008 promo from the fake in scenario.Cinephile parents, VHS rituals with family.Blonde child, hidden behind the living room sofa, eyes riveted on a chainsaw massacre, viewed incognito a dark evening in 1989.Six years at most.Then there was Shining, Wes Craven, Lynch, Cronenberg in adolescence, and all this slew of directors.ICES that forged Julia's style.It is decided, when she is tall, she will put uppercuts in full face, will make cinematographic collisions and do big things.

A meter eighty, black bracelets, an incandescent blonder and a smile on his lips: the Croisette will be returned three times by this tornado called Julia, scorpion of birth, 37, winner of the Palme d'Or.On Instagram, Garance Marillier-present in the three films, perhaps the red thread of the Ducournalian filmography-illustrates the three passages to Cannes de Julia: three photos, three Julia, three red carpets, 10 years apart.Between Junior (2011) at the Critics Week, Grave (2017) and its dynamic of the fortnight and titanium (2021) winning the palm during its visit to official competition, each Cannes selection offered Julia Ducournau a media experience,different critic and public, going crescendo.

Konbini chooses her for the Halloween special episode of their series "VideoClub": her black lipstick seduces me, what she says transports me, I say Amen to Bong Joon-Ho, Béni-Oui-Oui to Slenders and othersgenre films that I know very well that I will never watch them.She wanders in front of the DVDs, gets carried away in Serbian Film, Adule Cronenberg-New Topos of the interviews that will concern her-and makes this half an hour a real pleasure.It is that it is rare, Julia.Two-three interviews in Toronto for Grave (Bad Buzz that are the faintings of the spectator.ices in a festival, tap on the fingers of the trash julia);Some interviews in English on cinema scenes and gender seminars.A photo as a leopard fleece - it's funny, I have the same - on a set with m. Night Shyamalan, une absence notable des réseaux sociaux : she’s not there.

It is that Julia Ducournau appears against time of her time, while strangely integrating well: in Cannes, she answers cinephile questions by quoting Pasolini or other;only talks about cinema, hides his private life.The Fémis composes a lot of its team: closed circle that is the Ducournau team.How to get there, except by fully joining his intentions, his vision of cinema, his projects?The continuity of the junior team, serious and titanium (Eat, TV movie Canal+ made in 2012, being a slight step aside in its filmography) remains the same: Julia is at the head of the ship.It is that her little girl dream came true: the uppercuts, she sends them in full face to the French cinema-in the cinema at all-by the sole force of her short or feature films.In 2021, the cloud of Just Philippot, Teddy of the Boukherma brothers, were the distant cousins of Grave, himself inspired by Sheitan of Kim Chapiron, Martyrs of Pascal Laugier and Alii.Ducournau's cinema therefore has ascendants and descendants, making Julia a figurehead of genre cinema, cinema of genres, and genres in cinema.

"Despair, Hangover and Ecstasy" - Trash, Crash and Cronenberg: between moult and mutation

Everything is liquid (s) at Ducournau: drool, cyprine, sweat, essence, pus, and especially blood.Full -fledged character of Grave, it is his red color that marks the film.When Titana is rusty, Junior was distinguished between two or three false flesh prostheses.It is that Julia Ducournau thinks the bodies of her characters like beings in moult - ditto for her films, that said - whose skins stand out, whose bodies are model.Allegory of the adolescence of the young Justine, called junior: buttons, sebum, gargouillis, and moult, in the first sense;Appeal of the flesh that forces Justine (which is no longer so junior as that) to bite her sister, bite herself, greedily crunch in a chicken white;Bristed and raw flesh, reinforced with the titanium of Alexia, the adult, which models its extraordinary body until it tears it away, literally.

David Cronenberg's fly conjugated with splendor the drama of humanity and the winding alterations of the flesh: even transformation.De Cronenberg, major reference of Julia Ducournau, the latter kept this sensationalism - known as "body horror" for the spectator.ICES - which administers a kind of punch in the belly, a constant heart combined with a boundless fascination for the shock on the screen.A hair spike in one ear;a fire ;hair vomited by mouth;peeling skin;A devoured finger;A slaughter-butcher in a stairwell: here, near or far, which will delight the amateur.hemoglobin izes, as if Quentin Tarantino and Bong Joon-Ho had made a child.

But it is that something other than the bloody, ecstatic and tarantinsc cavalcades that fascinate me at Ducournau: it is a taste for trash, combined with the grinning humor.The director assumes in interviewing to love black humor, jokes of bad taste, moments of humor which are a breath for writing as for the viewing of the film: the cynicism of Alexia-Première-du-Nom in Grave,The sound assembly of an organized killing cut by a character called "Jupi, for the friends" for titanium, the incessant flow of fighting and insults in a self -refectory from Junior.

Scenes of festive and music, trips under acids and oblique looks, the repugnant and the outrageous: the trash of Ducournau is located on several levels, in the tights of Alexia de Titana, as in the "You have a shitty taste "from Justine to her sister.It is an addition of subtle moments that we would not accept in an average film, but that the Ducournalian universe poses then assumes without preamble, in a raw, formidable echo to the "RAW", English title serious.

"More whore than all whores" - genre and genres: Female Gaze et Compagnie

Garance Marillier Ondule, facing his mirror."First lesson in seduction / Being a whore with education": the song of nettles resonates in her ears, accompanying the sweet languid kiss of a teenager - virgin, vet, vegan - facing the ice.A few years earlier, it was the same garance, Tomboy, who discovered the throes of "femininity" and the male gaze of his comrades of a college class, with some Misanders and pseudo-violent jerks.It will be Alexia, later, who became an adult, who will undulate his body on his Cadillac, under the amazed eyes of his fans, under the neon lights of a tuning fair at Cap d'Agde.The three films of Julia Ducournau therefore assert themselves as a course of feminist themes - it is in the era of time, if and only if we want to read them like that.

Titana won the Palme d'Or: it is historic certainly, 28 years after Jane Campion, first and only woman (and again, she was an ex aequo) succeeded this feat with his piano lesson.Ultimate consecration of the Cannes Film Festival, the film and its remarks on the transition, the suffered transformation of Alexia into Adrien to escape the police and its past of Serial Killeuse - Beatrix Kiddo is never far away - have founded a kindd'Aura à Titane: it would be a written, interpreted and produced film by CIS, on the experiences of trans people.Add to that "let Julia Ducournau's monsters come in and here are the Thread Twitter controversy.If the Binder Homemade of Alexia-Adrien can refer to it, it is only a prism of reading: although eminently feminist, titanium may be rather a fable on unconditional love that we find somewhere withoutreason, that an ode of the cis gaze on trans people.If a subfect can be read there, it is surely by smiling and open-minded tips ("the greedy and visceral need[...] of a more inclusive and more fluid world, "she says in Cannes) that we can read the feminist and ally commitment of trans people from Ducournau:" Pushes, Adrien "during a delivery not like the others, a scene - ultimately not so common - harassment not of street, but bus;as well as a reading in subsext of a coming out of Adrien to Vincent, "I love you and what you are".Unconditional love will defeat, thank you Julia.

It is rather in his decorum that Titana is committed: member of the 50/50 collective, Julia Ducournau chooses a mixed wild cast for the main role of Alexia-Adrien, is aware of the difficulty of nude scenes,many in Titane, and opts for a mainly female team on the board."Each lesbian kiss is a revolution" is a feminist tag, who often returns to demonstration: discreetly, Julia Ducournau gets into languid kissing Agathe Rousselle and Garance Marillier, like that, the air of nothing.In Grave, Rabah Naït Oofella (Adrien), will say of himself, from the first meeting between the two new roommates: "Are you not a girl?No, they put you with a fag, it's the same!»».

Ducournau does not back down in front of anything: show shock and tape-à-l'oeil as well as unusual: gurgling of the belly come back in junior, serious and titanium, from female characters shown with their hair and their pants, theirdirty hair and their raw bodies, naked.The company of normalization of the sexualities and the humanity of the characters by Julia Ducournau therefore goes through that of the bodies, and that is what Iris Brey will theorize in the female gaze, a revolution on the screen, citing serious as an examplein his attempt to conceptualize the female Gaze.

"Justine's body is omnipresent, Ducournau films it as an envelope covered with hairs and eczema, as a repugnant and attractive entity.Justine discovers the codes of femininity at the same time as her desire for flesh.»»

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Iris Brey, the female look: a revolution on the screen (2020, Ed.Olive Tree)

« NESSUNO MI PUO GIUDICARE»» — Les interdits moraux : mythologie, parenté et parentalité

Sometimes life offers cakes on cakes that we already appreciate. Titane a remporté la Palme d’Or à Cannes : j’ai ressenti une fierté, moi qui ai participé au lobby-Ducournau, ai fait voir Grave à mon entourage, ai dû raconter cent fois le pitch difficilement comestible d’un « coming of age movie sur une ado végan qui devient cannibale»».

The laughter of Agathe Rousselle and Julia Ducournau in the Palais des Festivals made me understand that I had been right to set my sights on this ex-female director, out of nowhere.The station of a ter de Provence in early August, two weeks after the Palme d'Or, sent me another sign: the fortuitous meeting with Agathe Rousselle on a train, and the one hour conversation that followed meproved that I had had flair.

She wore purple fangs and her dog is called Siouxsee.The first thing she said to me is that Titane is a tragedy.The hypokhâgne roots of Julia Ducournau-and those of Agathe Rousselle, by the way-go up to the surface: cannibalism, incest and murder be the three fundamental prohibitions of all culture, of all civilization?Antiquity has not said the opposite.It is not the first to have explored the theme, bloody and therefore eminently cinematographic of anthropophagy, Claire Denis already tried there in 2001 with disorder Every Day: disturbing are the resemblands between the Beatrice Dalle and her red mouthBlood, and Ella Rumpf in Grave.

From the five red letters of the title, we understand that it is the gravity of ancestral determinism, of human nature, which will be the central theme of grave: as Oedipus will discover that he is the incestuous monster, Justine will look at her ownflesh, its double sororal alexia, with a bloody mouth, mimic death to feast on the flesh of others.She commit the irreparable of the engulfed finger - as in a tale of modern atrides, where Thyeste tastes her two sons in stews - of her own sister, perpetuating tradition.Serious, it is therefore a story of filiation and (in) humanity: blood descends there, flesh stands up, ingestion rubs shoulders with vomit, bleeding nose and scars on chest. Tornade cannoise, Ducournau ne se formalise pas des buzz autour de ses films : loin de jugements moraux ou de manichéisme, elle se contrefiche de la réputation sulfureuse d’un film pire que Cannibal Holocaust, et surtout, nessuno può giudicarla.

In addition, the privacy of Julia Ducournau, nothing filters.If not this two information, trivial at first glance: dad was dermato, mom gyneco.Julia grew up with the omnipresence of body, blood, skins, warts, blenorrhagia, in parents' books, strangely very present in her cinema.Vincent Lindon learns his neo-paternity in Titane, and the staging of the daily life of Junior shows mom calling the doctor.When Adrien becomes the immediate son, without preamble, of Vincent, is an astounding simplicity: "Legrand sapper is my son, and for you I am God. Alors le sapeur Legrand c’est Jésus, et Jésus il nous parlera quand il aura quelque chose à nous dire»».

Sisters, parents, family are portrayed in Ducournau's films: from this family air is born a kinship between his works, highlighted by onomastics.Of Junior was born Justine, then Alexia, surrounded by Adrien.This funny human comedy does work: the same first names are reborn, come back, always in a circle: Garance Marillier stays there in the three films, the unicorn t-shirt remains a constant, the technical team remains the same, the oblique and low looksremain the same, as if Alexia de Titana was a distant sister of junior, herself a small sister of the Alexia de Grave.

« IT’S GETTING BORING BY THE SEA»» — Ecrire un scénario : aller du baroque à l’épure

"After a series of unexplained crimes, a father finds his son who has been missing for 10 years. Titane : Métal hautement résistant à la chaleur et à la corrosion, donnant des alliages très durs»».Two summary lines, elliptical and enigmatic trailers: enough to stir up the crowds and perpetrate the mystery, the aura around his films.But what are Ducournau's films talking about?The director entered the fake in the scenario section: writing, it fascinates the khâgneuse, tortured.Pages and pages of scenario, v1, v2, v-je-ne-sais-pas-comien: the stories will be sewn, tortuous, winding.

On the one hand, there is an evolution of the structures of the films of Julia Ducournau: if junior was akin to a learning story, divided between the vanary and the after, the post-mutation of the little oneJustine, Grave takes a more radical, more daring turning point.After all, It’s getting Boring by the Sea.Justine (bis) will still discover herself, in a labeled, glowing scenario: serious is punctuated by shock sequences, Cora Crash, horror scenes strictly speaking, anthropophagy, and clever plans where the blood Unscrews, on bizuths hair as on Justine's lips.Alexia, older, in Titanium, makes the link between the mues of the film: from a bushy, visually licked sequence, Adrien will become the hero of a film on unconditional love.It is also in Titane, for the first time, that the scenario becomes bicameral: in Alexia-Adrien and its universe of tuning is added the universe of Vincent, Ryan, firefighters.From the baroque of the blood flowing to the purity of a chiaroscuro room where the words and the acts of love and death are said, this is the course of the Duke of Ducournau.

« Je dis toujours que je fais des films d’amour, mais personne ne me croit»» : Julia Ducournau, psychanalysée et (apparemment) torturée, a du plomb dans la cervelle, qu’elle illustre renforcée d’une plaque de titane chez Alexia.Constants persist in his cinema, insisting on the kinship of his films: family, love, envy, mutation of the body, the impulses and the inhumanity, the societal look at humans.e.s, the exploration of his desires.Making a list of Dukeworthy themes would be ultimately in vain, because his evolutionary films are ultimately more to live than to understand, than to listen, than to read: few dialogues remain in titanium compared to grave,few words.Only the emotion of a retort story remains, and key scenes.The director confides a lot about her rhythm of writing, her way of writing, her doubts and her inspirations: like a sportswoman, she sees rays of humorous light after complicated scenes.

Les multiples visionnages de Junior, Grave et Titane me révèlent des scènes que je retiens plus que d’autres : certaines seront tape-à-l’oeil parce que des pivots scénaristiques (la bien nommée « finger scene»», soulignée par les orgues sublimes de Jim Williams), certaines, plus dérisoires dans le scénario, me restent en tête parce qu’Alexia seule dans l’aéroport de Marseille, c’est beau, ou parce que Junior qui embrasse son pote, c’est touchant.Finally, these are the discreet mentions to the titles of the films, little winks of Julia to us, spectator.ices avides : le prénom de Justine (par trois fois), « Junior is dead»» dans Grave, et le « c’est résistant, c’est du Titane»» annonciateur.

« DOING IT TO DEATH»» — Jusqu’au boutisme et prouesses techniques

There are many sequences in Julia Ducournau's cinema.She builds them methodically, sometimes false them with blur fittings, creates whole choreographies to add a prosthesis, false blood: the festival scene of grave, that of Titane of titanium.Always punctuated, with the sweet sound of the kills for example, some sequences are masterpieces of ingenuity: to the boutiste, Julia Ducournau is.Toutre, as fond of classical painting as of music as romantic and Gothic literature (the junior night sequence, imprint of an aesthetic to the Poe), it does not back down in the face.With an almost immutable team (Jim Williams to sound; Ruben ImpSE in the photo), she navigates and does not compromise on the composition of her plans, always sublime;The colors and methods used to create very specific universes.The purple of the dance on future Islands, the yellow and the blue mixing in green, the beige of the mutant prostheses of junior.Color filmmaker, Julia Ducournau has only black and white, Gothic aesthetic obliges.

Contrary to naturalist aesthetics and a desire for cinema-truth, the filmmaker does not back down in front of the slow motion, plans of sets (special mention to the Alexia-Adrien creature escaping from the barracks in planoverall, as Souheila Yacoub escaped in the snow in Climax at Noé), the shock transitions and the outrageous of music with the organ to underline the drama of what she says.

Viscera often returns to Julia: visually, by vomit or bowels, by cutting large quick or by good junior gastro, but also musically. Entre les musiques additionnelles, souvent là pour soutenir l’intrigue, et la bande-originale de Jim Williams (pour Titane et Grave, mais les effets sonores de Junior étaient les mêmes), le son fait office de lien dans les différentes vies des personnages, dans les mues de peaux que perd le film : si Grave commence par des « Child Variations»», la musique « Lust»» n’y ressemble pas plus qu’à la Justine du début. À l’Alexia serial killeuse correspondront les caisses de « Fan in Car Kill»», quand « Bathroom Pieta»» soulignera avec douceur la reconnaissance inconditionnelle d’un père et de son fils, quels qu’ils soient, sur ces carreaux de salle de bain roses.

Until the Boutiste, Ducournau is armed with technique, patience, the same SFX team (the brilliant Olivier Afonso) and a lot of ingenuity. In fine, le plan séquence liminaire de Titane sera génial, car répété maintes et maintes fois, 47 prises, « du pur kiff»», dixit Julia, que j’imagine emmitouflée dans sa polaire léopard, visionnant, derrière son combo, le déhanché d’Agathe Rousselle, sur sa Cadillac, et se disant qu’honnêtement, ce qu’elle fait, c’est viscéral, doing it to death.

"Instead of abandoning us, referring to our loneliness, they greet us.They consider us.Tearing to the idea of leaving these heroines remains, but we let them go.There is no abstract.They are autonomous.They are free.Remains the joy of memory, to know that they are now living in our imagination.[...] Justine[...] And all the others tell us "we are before your eyes."It was time to straighten our eyes.»»

- The feminine look.A revolution on the screen, Iris Brey.