Raw

“It’s not me.” With noth­ing in her own wardrobe that con­forms to the ​‘night club’ dress code imposed by her uni­ver­si­ty seniors, vir­ginal stu­dent Jus­tine (Garance Mar­il­li­er) is try­ing on the par­ty dress belong­ing to her old­er, more expe­ri­enced sis­ter Alex­ia (Ella Rumpf ) – but it does not feel like her.

It is Justine’s first week at vet­eri­nary col­lege, the alma mater of her over­pro­tec­tive par­ents (Lau­rent Lucas, Joana Preiss), and the cur­rent digs of way­ward, rebel­lious Alex­ia. So Jus­tine has sev­er­al big shoes to fill, even if she’s not sure whether any of them quite fit. Mean­while, it is ​‘Rush Week’, a haz­ing rite of pas­sage in which ​‘rook­ies’ like Jus­tine and her gay room­mate Adri­an (Rabah Nait Oufel­la) are bul­lied and blood­ed by seniors into find­ing their path, their fan­cies and them­selves in the big­ger, wider world of adult­hood and independence.

As Jus­tine flies the nest only to then have to nego­ti­ate just how far she is will­ing to fall from the tree, and as all these young ini­ti­ates stretch their wings and test the lim­its of their desire, Julia Ducournau’s fran­coph­o­ne fea­ture debut deals with clas­sic com­ing-of-age themes. Except, as any­one who has heard the hyped sto­ries of faint­ing in the aisles at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val may sus­pect, Raw is also a genre film.

With her par­ents, Jus­tine shares a strict veg­e­tar­i­an­ism from which Alex­ia, since leav­ing home, has secret­ly lapsed – and once, as part of Rush Week, Jus­tine has been dri­ven to eat a rabbit’s kid­ney, she will dis­cov­er a taste for raw flesh that she clum­si­ly strug­gles as much to resist as to indulge.

Can­ni­bal­ism is both metaphor and real­i­ty here. The trig­ger­ing of Justine’s blood­lust coin­cides with her sex­u­al awak­en­ing, and with her first ten­ta­tive steps into wom­an­hood, mak­ing her pecu­liar con­di­tion a clear fig­ure for the emer­gence of unre­strained, ani­mal­is­tic appetites. And while she is the film’s focus, we see oth­er char­ac­ters explor­ing the bound­aries of their own self-image and iden­ti­ty, be it Adrian’s uneasy flir­ta­tion with het­ero­sex­u­al encoun­ters, anoth­er student’s obses­sion with mon­key rape, and a third’s impulse to lick her partner’s eyeballs.

All these trans­gres­sions rep­re­sent poet­ic exag­ger­a­tions of every­day ado­les­cent exper­i­men­ta­tion – except that it is also made clear that such dan­ger­ous acts of extreme self-real­i­sa­tion, unless played out with­in safe con­fines, can leave real world scars. While hor­ror is often fil­tered through the male gaze, Ducournau’s film shows a refresh­ing pref­er­ence for the erotics of the female eye, reduc­ing male objects of desire to mere meat and bone.

Jus­tine may be unsure of her­self and uncom­fort­able in her own skin (the words quot­ed at the begin­ning of the review are emblem­at­ic of her character’s pro­vi­sion­al sta­tus), but that does not make her in any way a pushover or a vic­tim. Asked by her (female) doc­tor how she sees her­self, Jus­tine replies ​“aver­age”.

Indeed, Raw mere­ly expos­es the every­day mon­strous­ness each of us har­bours with­in our soft, frag­ile exte­ri­ors, and the accom­mo­da­tions we have to make with our dark­er nature.