Julia Ducournau drops the body horror and just tortures a metaphor in Alpha

Sadly, it doesn’t take long for Alpha to settle down in its themes and become an inexplicably shallow and simple-minded AIDS allegory. (The disease is actually a disease, and not anything more surprising than that, symbolized with an A tattoo for AIDS, get it?) The movie version of the disease spreads the same way as in real life, though nothing about it resembles the real aftermath of getting HIV. Those who get it turn a color and texture that resembles a smooth-surfaced marble. Strangely beautiful, though, beautiful is the last thing you want to associate AIDS with. With her previous movies being as extreme as possible in terms of the body horror elements, it’s anyone’s guess why Ducournau thought Alpha should be the project to dial them back in favor of prettifying a horrific epidemic with roots in the real world. Perhaps the intention was to be respectful to all the lives lost and irreversibly affected. But her visual choices instead feel somewhat offensive, or at least miscalculated.

The rest of Alpha looks grim and dark, with dominant shades of unappealing brown. The color palette does fluctuate when the film follows Alpha in her present-day reality versus her dreams (or dreams within dreams), some of which involve her infected uncle Amin (Tahar Rahim, physically frail and transformed for the role). He has had the disease for nearly a decade (it’s impossible to follow the timeline rules the movie sets up for itself), and as Alpha progresses with her own symptoms, she recalls her uncle from the past. In the opening shot, Alpha draws on her uncle’s arm; later on, the two share scenes and dreams (an inexplicable one is accompanied by “The Mercy Seat”), with Amin’s presence becoming more of a question mark. Is he really still around in the present day?

Alpha is a lot more successful when Ducournau allows Alpha to be who she is, namely, a 13-year-old girl with teenage anxieties. Bullies find her, seeing a sign of infection when she bleeds into the school pool. Elsewhere, her boyfriend Adrien (Louai El Amrousy) can’t rise to the occasion when Alpha needs his support. Also in the mix is her teacher, whom she runs into at the clinic, next to his visibly infected boyfriend. (The teacher is also a target of school bullies due to his sexual orientation.) These scenes help ground the movie in some relatable narrative beats, but their impact doesn’t last long. Much of Ducournau’s coy insinuations and metaphors about an epidemic that has already been the subject of many exceptional works in film, theater, and literature don’t make a great deal of sense on this side of the 21st century. These topics are neither new nor hushed. Ducournau’s plunge into them with so much would-be high-minded subtlety feels immediately dated.

One often wishes that Alpha leaned closer into the mother-daughter theme at the heart of the story. Both Farahani and Boros (who is terrific at looking like a kid and grown-up all at once) give their all, building a ferocious dynamic that’s complex but loving. Yet, Maman and Alpha often get silenced by the movie’s grating sound design, loud soundtrack, and overplotted turns. The disease in Alpha dries people out on the inside, before turning them into dust. But the disease’s desiccated metaphor is so tortured that it also makes the uninviting movie that surrounds it crumble in real time.

Director: Julia Ducournau
Writer: Julia Ducournau
Starring: Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani, Mélissa Boros, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield, Louai El Amrousy
Release Date: May 19, 2025 (Cannes)