Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Julia Ducournau
Starring: Mélissa Boros, Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield
When was the last time you worried about catching AIDS? I'm guessing probably not this century, and if you weren't alive in the '80s or '90s you may well have never given that once rampant disease a thought. And yet, in the year of our lord 2025, writer/director Julia Ducournau has decided to deliver an AIDS allegory with her latest movie. While some filmmakers have used genre dressing to address our more recent pandemic, Ducournau has gone back to the social panic of the late 20th century. In 2025 it's difficult to grasp any timely relevance from this redundant theme, and you can't help but suspect that the French auteur is simply drawing on '80s horror movies like John Carpenter's The Thing and David Cronenberg's The Fly, two remakes of '50s monster movies that were widely read as commentaries on AIDS at the height of the epidemic.
Ducournau even sets her film not in some near future version of France but in what appears to be an alternate version of late 20th century France, one where the Franc is still the currency. The movie plays out over two distinct timelines. In one we witness the emergence of a mysterious new disease that slowly turns its victims into marble. Like AIDS, the disease is transmitted via blood, making drug addicts and gay men disproportionate victims.
The second timeline plays out eight years later. 13-year-old Alpha (Mélissa Boros) shocks her doctor mother (Golshifteh Farahani) by returning from a party with the letter "A" crudely tattooed on her arm. Her mother immediately fears that an unclean needle was used and arranges for Alpha to have a blood test to determine if she has contracted the disease.
Meanwhile, Alpha's heroin-addicted uncle (Tahar Rahim) moves into their home in the hopes of getting clean. This is where the plot starts to fall apart. Alpha's mother is shown to care about her daughter so much that she pricks her own finger and mixes her blood with Alpha's. If her daughter is going to get sick then she wants to go out alongside her. Why then would she move her junkie brother not just into her home but into Alpha's bedroom, knowing the risks?
Ducournau goes out of her way to paint society as cruel and bigoted towards carriers of the disease, but it's impossible to damn anyone for their understandable caution. Take a scene in which Alpha begins bleeding profusely in her school's swimming pool. The other kids scream and get out of the pool as quickly as possible. We're supposed to view this as victimising of Alpha, but who wouldn't react with such panic?
The idea of turning to stone might work as a concept in some sci-fi novel, but on screen it just looks silly. It's far too fantastical an image for how glibly it's treated here. A scene in a doctor's waiting room involving a gay man in the late stage of the disease is supposed to be moving and poignant, but visually it resembles a comedy skit or a TV commercial. Ducournau's script makes allusions to Christianity (Lot's wife) and Islam (the Samum), but in a superficial way that suggests they're merely ideas she overheard while stoned at a party.
Alpha is almost held together by the strength of its three leads. If the film can't sell its metaphor, Farahani, Rahim and especially newcomer Boros give it their best shot with performances that suggest they've fully bought in to their director's confused vision. Boros' youthful naivete helps us navigate this fantasy world, but even Alpha's best scenes play like a less compelling cousin of Lea Mysius's 2017 gem Ava, in which a young French girl similarly decides to make the most of her life before she goes blind.
While she can't make Alpha work as a compelling allegorical narrative, Ducournau is still able to fashion a striking image here and there. The movie's highlight is a (dream?) sequence in which Alpha is taken by her uncle to a nightclub frequented by disease carriers; there is an unsettling poetry in seeing these shunned half-marble people going out on their own terms.
Alpha is on UK/ROI VOD now.
