ALPHA : The film that squints more than its heroine

ALPHA by Julia Ducournau: When Cinema Goes Off the Rails (and Without a Helmet)

There are films that leave you speechless.

And then there's ALPHA, the latest UFO from Julia Ducournau, which rather leaves you with a sigh, a few headaches, and an irrepressible desire to watch a good old Fast & Furious just to regain a sense of the word "structure."

After the thunderous Titane, Palme d'Or at Cannes three years ago — a mix of body horror, V8 engine, and deviant poetry — we were naturally expecting Ducournau to take a turn.

And indeed she did. Very strongly. So strongly that she left the artistic road to dash headlong into a conceptual concrete wall.

Mise-en-scene? What mise-en-scene?

Here, the camera seems lost, disoriented, like a drone with a GPS malfunction. We never know if Ducournau is directing her film or if it’s the film that is directing her.

It trembles, it wobbles, it spins around emptiness with blind confidence.

The slightest shot seems to scream: 'Look how significant I am!' when it means nothing, or worse: it mimics intelligence without ever invoking it.

Aesthetically... it's a no.

ALPHA is ugly.

Not ugly in a disturbing or transgressive sense.

Ugly like a failed contemporary installation in a municipal hall: drab colors, flat lighting, gray-blue filters seen a thousand times, and a sense of composition that could be entrusted to an intern on acid.

The film seems to believe that ugliness = boldness.

But no.

Ugliness without an idea = laziness.

And the actors...

We don't blame them, but it's hard not to notice that the casting seems to have been done backwards.

The faces are chosen not for their expressiveness, but for their ability to illustrate an aesthetic manifesto: 'the stranger you are, the more you have your place.'

This could work if the story followed, but unfortunately, it does not.

Charisma is absent, the dialogues are flat, and the emotion, when it dares to peek in, is immediately crushed under an avalanche of clumsy symbols.

A pre-teen heroine who is cross-eyed towards... what exactly?

At the center of the film, a girl in crisis. She is cross-eyed (literally), she is restless, she rushes through the stages of puberty with the grace of a bulldozer.

She is vulgar, loud, and unsympathetic — but not in the fascinating way of Mathilda from Léon.

No, just unpleasant.

And since the story follows no logic (neither emotional nor narrative), we end up losing interest.

An hour and thirty minutes of flacid chaos, where one desperately searches for a red thread, a theme, a stake.

Nothing.

Narrative nothingness wrapped in arty aluminum foil.

Politically correct, festival-style.

Impossible to ignore the casting that was clearly designed to check all the boxes of woke bingo.

Tahar Rahim lost 30 kilos for his role in ALPHA, probably to measure up to the abyssal void of his character — a ghost wandering between two scenes, as useless to the narrative as a semicolon in a text.

Golshifteh Farahani, the Iranian-Kurdish Monica Belucci, seems to have confused ALPHA with a kitschy adaptation of Medeea, delivering a performance as grandiloquent as if she were playing a Greek tragedy... in a poorly lit basement, with papier-mâché dialogues.

Diversity, fluidity, inclusion…

Very well.

But it still needs to serve a story, a purpose, a coherence.

Here, it looks more like a demonstration than a sincere intention.

In trying to please everyone, ALPHA ends up touching no one.

And ultimately resembles a soulless ideological collage.

Conclusion: back to square one.

ALPHA is a bit like those contemporary art pieces that you stand in front of for five minutes, wondering if it’s us who are idiots or if it’s just bad.

Spoiler: sometimes, it’s just bad.

Ducournau promised us a slap.

What we get is a soft slap, poorly framed, delivered with the left hand.

The saddest part is that beneath the chaos and the directorial ticks, one can guess that there might have been a real film to be made...

But ALPHA, in its current state, is neither a film, nor an experience, nor even a provocation.

It’s an author’s whim, disguised as a radical work.

And, as often happens with whims,

we come away feeling that

we’ve wasted our time.

By Giulia Dobre

ALPHA : Le Film Qui Louche Plus Que Son Héroïne

 

ALPHA de Julia Ducournau : Quand le cinéma part en roue libre (et sans casque)

Il y a des films qui vous laissent sans voix. 

Et puis il y a ALPHA, le dernier OVNI de Julia Ducournau, qui vous laisse plutôt avec un soupir, quelques maux de tête, et cette envie irrépressible de revoir un bon vieux Fast & Furious juste pour retrouver le sens du mot "structure".

Après le coup de tonnerre Titane, Palme d’Or à Cannes il y a trois ans — mélange de body horror, moteur V8 et poésie déviante — on attendait forcément Ducournau au tournant. 

Et bien elle a tourné. Très fort. 

Tellement fort qu’elle a quitté la route artistique pour foncer tout droit dans un mur conceptuel en béton armé.

Mise en scène ? Quelle mise en scène ?

Ici, la caméra semble perdue, désorientée, comme un drone en panne de GPS. 

On ne sait jamais si Ducournau dirige son film ou si c’est le film qui la dirige. 

Ça tremble, ça vacille, ça tourne autour du vide avec une confiance aveugle. Le moindre plan semble hurler : "Regardez comme je suis signifiant !" alors qu’il ne signifie rien, ou pire : il mime l’intelligence sans jamais la convoquer.

Esthétiquement... c’est non.

ALPHA est laid. 

Pas laid au sens dérangeant ou transgressif. Laid comme une installation contemporaine ratée dans une salle municipale : couleurs baveuses, éclairages plats, filtres gris-bleutés vus mille fois, et un sens de la composition qu’on pourrait confier à un stagiaire sous acide. 

Le film semble croire que laideur = audace. 

Mais non. 

Laideur sans idée = paresse.

Et les acteurs...

On ne leur jette pas la pierre, mais difficile de ne pas remarquer que le casting semble avoir été fait à l’envers. 

Les visages sont choisis non pour leur expressivité, mais pour leur capacité à illustrer un manifeste esthétique : "plus tu es étrange, plus tu as ta place". 

Ce qui pourrait fonctionner si le jeu suivait, mais hélas, non. 

Le charisme est aux abonnés absents, les dialogues sont plats, et l’émotion, quand elle ose pointer le bout du nez, est immédiatement écrasée sous une avalanche de symboles lourdingues.

Une héroïne pré-ado qui louche vers... quoi au juste ?

Au centre du film, une jeune fille en crise. Elle louche (littéralement), elle s’agite, elle brûle les étapes de la puberté avec la grâce d’un bulldozer. 

Elle est vulgaire, bruyante, antipathique — mais pas de cette manière fascinante à la Mathilda de Léon. 

Non, juste désagréable. 

Et comme l’histoire ne suit aucune logique (ni émotionnelle, ni narrative), on finit par décrocher. 

Une heure trente de chaos flasque, où l’on cherche désespérément un fil rouge, un thème, un enjeu. 

Rien.

 Le néant narratif emballé dans du papier alu arty.

Le politiquement correct sauce festival.

Impossible d’ignorer le casting visiblement pensé pour cocher toutes les cases du bingo woke. 

Tahar Rahim a perdu 30 kilos pour son rôle dans ALPHA, sans doute pour être à la hauteur du vide abyssal de son personnage — un fantôme errant entre deux scènes, aussi inutile au récit qu’un point-virgule dans un texto.

Golshifteh Farahani, la Monica Belucci irano-kurde, semble avoir confondu ALPHA avec une adaptation de Médée à la sauce kitsch, livrant une performance aussi grandiloquente que si elle jouait une tragédie grecque... dans un sous-sol mal éclairé, avec des dialogues en papier mâché.

Diversité, fluidité, inclusion… Très bien. 

Mais encore faut-il que cela serve une histoire, un propos, une cohérence.

 Ici, ça ressemble davantage à une démonstration qu’à une intention sincère. 

À force de vouloir plaire à tout le monde, ALPHA ne touche personne. 

Et finit par ressembler à un collage idéologique sans âme.

Conclusion : retour à la case départ.

ALPHA, c’est un peu comme ces œuvres d’art contemporain devant lesquelles on reste cinq minutes, en se demandant si c’est nous qui sommes idiots ou si c’est juste nul. 

Spoiler : parfois, c’est juste nul. 

Ducournau nous avait promis une claque. 

On se retrouve avec une gifle molle, mal cadrée, donnée avec la main gauche.

Le plus triste, c’est que sous le chaos et les tics de mise en scène, on devine qu’il y avait peut-être un vrai film à faire. 

Mais ALPHA, en l’état, n’est ni un film, ni une expérience, ni même une provocation.

C’est un caprice d’auteur déguisé en œuvre radicale. 

Et, comme souvent avec les caprices, 

on en ressort avec l’impression 

d’avoir perdu son temps.

Par Giulia Dobre

How to Lose Friends and Alienate Gifts: A Trier Guide

 

               Reality Bites, Fiction Hugs 

             (with Stellan Skarsgård)

    There are films that you watch… and there are films that politely take your soul, turn it upside down, and then invite it out for coffee.

 Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value belongs firmly to the latter category.

Three people and one ghost of a past gather in a house: a legendary actor (Stellan Skarsgård) who refuses to grow old gracefully, his daughter (Renate Reinsve) who can say more with one sigh than most people manage in a TED Talk, and Elle Fanning, who shows up like a bittersweet question mark in the middle of their emotional Scrabble game.

They talk, they clash, they love, they regret. 

In short: it’s a family reunion where the main dish is existential crisis, served warm with a side of laughter and tears.

By the end, you realize the moral: don’t refuse love, friendship, or even roles in strange little films—because unlike Netflix recommendations, those chances don’t come back.

At the heart of it all stands Stellan Skarsgård, in a performance so magnetic that one half-expects the other actors to start orbiting around him like confused satellites. 

He doesn’t just act—he smuggles entire emotional landscapes onto the screen with the ease of a man opening a sardine tin. 

His presence alone could make a phone book reading feel like Shakespearean tragedy.

 Stellan Skarsgård delivers a performance so good it should be illegal in at least three countries. 

He doesn’t just act—he casually detonates emotional bombs while pretending it’s just another Tuesday. 

Honestly, if gravity had feelings, Skarsgård would be the one pulling them down to earth.

But Stellan is not alone in this emotional heist. 

Renate Reinsve delivers interiorized, fabulous acting of the kind that makes you lean in closer, afraid you’ll miss the micro-expression that just shattered your heart. 

She can turn silence into dialogue, a glance into an essay. One day someone will write a PhD thesis on her ability to communicate the end of the world with just an eyebrow.

And then there’s Elle Fanning, who offers a wonderfully bittersweet interpretation, like a cocktail that starts sweet, slides into sour, and ends by leaving you tipsy with existential regret. 

She is sunshine and storm in the same frame—reminding us that joy and pain are often roommates who refuse to pay separate rent.

But here’s the kicker: the film quietly points out the terrible human habit of refusing what’s offered—love, friendship, a role in a film, or simply the last slice of pizza.

 Spoiler: those gifts don’t come back. They vanish forever, like socks in a washing machine. Pride may keep your hands clean, but it leaves your heart rather empty.

Beyond the performances, the film whispers (or perhaps yells, depending on your personal level of stubbornness) a cautionary tale: refusing what others give us, may seem like an act of proud independence, but it is in fact a first-class ticket to regret.

What Trier does so devilishly well is blur the line between fiction and reality. 

Reality, after all, is often stranger, sharper, and more unrelenting than any script.

 But fiction has its secret power: it can hold up the unbearable truths of reality, give them a neat frame, and let us sit in the dark, safe, while the therapeutic magic does its work. 

It hurts—yes. But it hurts beautifully.

 In short: reality punches you in the gut; fiction gives you a bruise and then a hug.

Sentimental Value is Trier’s playful proof that you can stand in Bergman’s shadow without getting a sunburn.

Existential family drama, yes, but now with Wi-Fi, better haircuts, and the occasional laugh.

If Bergman’s films were like being locked in a chilly Swedish cabin with your innermost fears, Trier’s Sentimental Value is the same cabin—but someone remembered to bring wine, music, and Elle Fanning.

So, is Sentimental Value a comedy, a tragedy, or a therapy session disguised as cinema?

 The answer is: yes. 

Sentimental Value is equal parts therapy, tragedy, and comedy. 

Just remember: when life offers you something, take it. 

Especially if it’s a film starring Stellan Skarsgård.

By Giulia Dobre

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=586c5f3fd02fa8680341d86a389aa102fe82fd0f7fa3ebabaf619fa55ba48a71JmltdHM9MTc1NjA4MDAwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=39e13063-77a6-66e0-16d9-2630768367e7&u=a1L3ZpZGVvcy9yaXZlcnZpZXcvcmVsYXRlZHZpZGVvP3E9c2VudGltZW50YWwrdmFsdWUrZmlsbSt0cmFpbGVyJm1pZD1FNDA0RkZGNEQyRDc4NEM4RkU5MUU0MDRGRkY0RDJENzg0QzhGRTkxJkZPUk09VklSRQ&ntb=1

Queer: A View to a Chill- When Love Gets Bored

From Bond to Beyond: Daniel Craig in the Art Deco Heartbreak Hotel

"Queer"

In a stylized mirage that feels like a fever-dream at Cinecittà, Luca Guadagnino constructs 1950s Mexico City with such artificial chic that you'd swear Edward Hopper dropped by to doodle on the sets.

Amid this meticulously curated illusion strides Daniel Craig—once your sharp-witted 007—now transformed into William Lee, a sweating, vulnerable hustler, who makes losing your composure look as riveting as saving the world.

Critics are unanimous: this is not Bond. 

It’s something far more raw—and, dare we say, awkwardly heroic.

As Balzac profoundly reminds us: “In love there’s always one who suffers, and one who gets bored.”

 Here, Lee suffers—agonizing, wracked by heroin, longing so intense it bleeds.

 Eugene, on the other hand… let’s just say his interest wanes quicker than a Bond girl’s attention span.

The film plunges into a psychedelic third act straight from your most vivid acid-fueled nightmare—complete with jungle rituals, CGI slithery snakes, and hallucinatory interludes that will leave the viewer both dazzled and dazed.

What emerges is a chronicle of tragic, theatrical longing: Lee—the eternally enamored sufferer—wanders through hyper-real sets, drugged catharsis, and symbolic dollhouses.

There love consumes itself, echoing Balzac’s bitter prescription for unrequited passion.

Director Luca Guadagnino takes William S. Burroughs’ jagged little love story, polishes it, wraps it in vintage cellophane, and serves it on a silver tray.

 Burroughs, the renegade of literary heroin highs and heartbreak lows, might have lit his cigarette from the film’s neon glow and muttered, ‘Well… that’s one way to clean up my mess.’

 Guadagnino, for his part, seems to wink back across time, saying, ‘Don’t worry, Bill—I kept the suffering, just added better wallpaper.’

Queer is a beautifully artificial dreamscape, with Craig’s bravura vulnerability at its emotional core. 

And in the grand tradition of Balzac’s insight, it reminds us: in the theater of desire, someone is always burning to feel—while someone else is already checking their watch.

https://youtu.be/eknj5_0tF2s?feature=shared

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By G.D.

Harvest - A rather indigestible parable

 Harvest - A rather indigestible parable about capitalism and globalization

That Harvest often proves to be unusual should not come as a surprise, as Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari is known for cultivating the art of the bizarre, as seen in Attenberg, her most well-known feature film.

Athina-Rachel Tsangari is a Greek director whose film Attenberg, featuring Ariane Labed and Yorgos Lanthimos, made waves among cinephiles.

Harvest, her new film, the first she has shot in English, offers a quirky immersion into a world before the industrial revolution, where sunsets and animal life abound.

Should we absolutely see in her latest film a mirror to our modern world, in which the terms of Liberty, equality, fraternity seem increasingly inadequate, and where capitalism devours everything in its path?

Yes, if one wishes.

But it is primarily the timeless atmosphere that one remembers, almost medieval, like a painting by Brueghel that would come to life..

A sumptuous nature and men and women who live in harmony with it, without social strata.

But that cannot last long, even when one is wary of 'foreigners.'

While the director's staging can be praised, even with some mannerist aspects, the choral nature of the ensemble distracts attention, while the voiceover proves unnecessary.

The length is excessive as well and largely dilutes the stakes.

Adapted from the eponymous novel by Jim Crace, released in 2013, this film is satirizing the present world, while it's political and poetic about a bygone era, capturing the moment of transition into a form of rural capitalism.

Athina Rachel Tsangari introduces her very personal touch into this nearly western with fable-like qualities.

But it’s a shame that it contributes to leaving us with a more than mixed overall impression.

The camera, tired from incessantly shaking, is placed just anywhere, in order to give the 'actors' (who are visibly bored) time to deliver the snippets of information that the screenwriter realized were missing for understanding this simplistic plot.

They didn't even bother to show these so-called peasants how to use the slightest tool (ha! plowing with a foot-pushed scratch plow!) and these miserable hermits who have never seen the sea are eating scallops to the sound of violins!

Aside from these ridiculous moments, it’s a surreal, bucolic, dark film, an UFO carried by the irresistible Caleb Landry Jones, even if sometimes on the edges of overacting.

Discovered last year in competition at the Venice Film Festival, 'Harvest' is a kind of tale about the loss of innocence and the transition to capitalism.

A sun-drenched parable where capitalism strolls into the vineyard wearing designer sunglasses, steals the grapes, and then invites you to the tasting — for a fee. 

Workers bend, sweat, and laugh in the golden light, but the laughter has that faint aftertaste of someone else’s profit.

 The camera lingers on hands, faces, and the quiet hum of labor, until you start to wonder: is this a celebration of the harvest, or a very polite hold-up?

Either way, Tsingari bottles the whole thing like fine wine.

The result is complex, dry, and just a little intoxicating, leaving you tipsy on its strange blend of beauty and bite.

Giulia Dobre