Raw (Movie Review)

Raw is the debut movie of Julia Ducournau, a French directress. If you have one and a half hours to waste, do watch it. One of my colleagues has underlined the overt feminist theming of the movie. It seems that, in his view, the vegetarianism of the sisters in the movie represents feminity; but the environment — the university — or patriarchy, thwarts that feminity, forcing the women into meat-eating, the symbolic patriarchy. He also posits that the film is pro-animal. His analysis is Lacanian, which I frankly do not understand, and I am not a fan of psychoanalysis; so this description might not be fully fair to what he puts forward. However, his main opinion is that the movie is both feminist and pro-animal.

I, however, don’t think any of that is the case. I think Ducournau’s debut is anti-feminist, anti-animal, and homophobic, reinforcing prejudices about women, vegetarians, and also — gay men. Why?

The movie’s plot centers around the secret desires of two sisters, Justine, who is a freshman, and Alexia, an older student. They find themselves at the same veterinary university. Coming from a vegetarian family, Justine finds it hard to get through a freshman initiation ritual conducted by senior students: eating the raw liver of a dog. Her sister motivates her by eating a liver herself, seemingly unphased by it, as if vegetarianism is just an old familial echo for her. The gesture is sufficient enough for Justine to attempt eating the liver; however, she spits it out soon afterwards.

So the idea seems straightforward for now — the patriarchy are the senior students, the ones who bully the freshmen, who make them forgo their values, destroy their ego and so on. Alexia has already become accustomed to this sort of atmosphere; breaking away at family traditions is an easy task for her, so she submits to the patriarchy. Not so for her sister. Well, at least for now.

As the movie continues, we notice that the initiation ritual has let loose something inside of Justine. She begins secretly indulging in meat-eating, which, at first, is very shameful for her. Justine attempts to pocket some meat at the cafeteria, eats a meat sandwich in her dorm room at night, and so on. Soon, this meat-eating turns into self-cannibalism in the form of eating hair. Then, into cannibalism of her sister in the form of eating her finger in a funny twist of events.

For Alexia, the moment of “letting loose” seems to be when she sees her sister eat her finger. She soon stages a traffic accident to taste the brain of the driver. One thing leads to another, and Justine’s gay roommate is killed and cannibalised by Alexia; Alexia goes to jail, while Justine comes back to her family home. Her father confides in her during dinner that this thirst for blood is hereditary; opening up his shirt to expose a wounded torso, slashed and gnawed at by his wife.

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So it seems the “patriarchy” hasn’t really imposed anything on the sisters — it only activated some secret inner drive. Indeed it seems the entire movie is about shameful secret drives. In one scene, Justine has sex with her gay roommate in a passionate moment. The vegetarian secretely craves meat, and cannot escape this “primal” drive; the gay man secretly craves a woman’s touch. Perhaps, even, the sisters secretely crave each other, the ultimate taboo?

The first two are reinforcements of prejudices in our society. You can pretend you’re ethical by not eating meat, but in secret, when no one is looking, you crave meat. You may pretend you’re queer, but when push comes to shove, you really want to grab some breasts. The original title of the movie is Grave (French for raw/grave); perhaps it should be Crave?

Feminism in this movie can only be seen in the dominance of the female characters — who literally eat away, mostly at men, but also at each other. Alexia eats the gay roommate and the car crash victim; Justine eats her sister’s finger, a part of a dead male corpse, chews away at her roommates shoulder, and at the lips of another male student. Finally, their mother chews away at her husband.

This female lust for blood and meat; is it really the result of the patriarchal environment of the university, or is there a different message here: this lust is hereditary? Your mother does this, you do it, and your children will do it? From this perspective, the message of the movie seems quite appaling: women are bloodthirsty, cannibalistic, self-destructive, but predominantely eating away at men. And this is in their genes, or nature. To be fair, that sounds like a horrible way of looking at the second sex. Of course, all of this assuming the movie was supposed to portray what my colleague has put forward. It could just be a cool movie about women-cannibals with incestous underlines. But I digress. All in all, I don’t think there’s a perspective on this film that would paint it in a feminist, pro-animal light; unless it’s a perspective that completely ignores the plot.