Raw (French: Grave) is a 2016 French-Belgian horror drama film written and directed by Julia Ducournau, and starring Garance Marillier. The film is a coming-of-age horror film that deals with a young vegetarian's first year at veterinary school when she tastes meat for the first time and develops a craving for flesh.
The film premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and was released in France on 15 March 2017 to critical acclaim.
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Plot
Lifelong vegetarian Justine begins her first semester at veterinary school, the same one her older sister is currently attending and where her parents met. Her first night, she meets her gay roommate Adrien and is forced to partake in a hazing ritual, welcoming the new students. They are brought to a party, where Justine feels uncomfortable until she runs into her older sister Alexia. Alexia shows Justine old class photos of students bathed in blood, including one with their parents. The next morning, the new class is splattered with blood during their class photo and then are lined up and forced to eat raw rabbit's kidneys. Justine refuses, saying she is a vegetarian and even asking Alexia to back her up. However Alexia denies she's a vegetarian and after Justine watches Alexia eat a kidney, she reluctantly eats one as well. Later that night, Justine discovers a strong, itchy rash all over her body. She goes to the doctor the next day, who diagnoses her with food poisoning and gives her a cream for the rash.
The next day, Justine begins having cravings for meat, stealing a hamburger from the cafeteria, which she later throws out, ashamed of herself. Still craving meat, she and Adrien take a late night trip to a gas station so no one will see Justine eating meat. On their way there, Justine observes a car crash. Unsatisfied with her trip to the gas station, Justine ends up eating raw chicken in the morning. After she talks with her teacher about cheating, Justine throws up a bundle of hair she ate. That night, she drinks with Alexia and asks if she can sleep at her place. She finds the same cream in Alexia's cabinet that the doctor gave Justine. Alexia gives her a bikini wax, during which some of the wax gets stuck on Justine's skin and Alexia proceeds to try to cut the wax off with sharp scissors. Justine kicks her away and Alexia accidentally cuts her own finger off and faints. Justine immediately calls an ambulance. As she waits, she is overwhelmed with her craving for meat, and eats the finger which Alexia sees when she wakes up. At the hospital she tries to throw it up but fails. The missing finger is blamed on Quicky, Alexia's dog, who is put down.
The next morning, Alexia takes Justine to a deserted road, where she jumps in front of a car, which crashes into a tree. Alexia starts eating one of the passengers, as Justine tries to stop her. She walks back to school alone. Despite this, Justine's craving for human meat grows and she starts lusting after Adrien. She finds Alexia playing video games with him and gets jealous. That night, Justine has a nightmare where something attacks her in her sleep. Once she recovers, she arrives at a party, where paint is thrown at her as part of another hazing ritual and she is forced to kiss a boy, during which she bites part of his lip off. Later as she is washing herself, one of her teeth falls out and she eats it. Justine confides in Adrien and they end up having sex, during which Justine tries to bite Adrien several times, finally biting her own arm as she climaxes. They fight the next day.
Justine gets extremely intoxicated at a party, when she meets Alexia who takes her to the morgue. The next morning, everyone in the school stares at Justine, some avoiding her. After a lecture, Adrien shows her a video of a drunken Justine crawling on the floor like an animal trying to take bites out of the arm of a corpse which Alexia pulls out of reach. An angry Justine attacks Alexia in the quad and the two fight. Alexia bites part of Justine's face off and they both bite each other's arms, finally taken comfort in eating one another only to be pulled apart by two coeds. Later, Alexia bandages Justine's wound. The morning after, the hazing week ends and Justine awakens to find Adrien dead in his bed, with most of his right leg eaten away. She thinks she killed him in her sleep at first but finds a bloody ski pole on the floor next to the bed and a stab wound in his back. She gets out of the bed to find a bloody and mostly catatonic Alexia slumped in the kitchen holding a video game controller. Justine takes the ski pole and points at Alexia's head but then decides not to kill Alexia. Justine takes Alexia to the shower to get her cleaned up.
Alexia is put into prison where Justine and her parents visit her. Despite everything the two sisters appear to be on good terms as Justine presses the scar on her cheek from the bite Alexia gave her to the glass and Alexia kisses it.
At home Justine's father tells her that what happened is neither her fault nor Alexia's and explains that when he first met Justine's mother he couldn't understand why she didn't want to be with him until the first time they kissed. He then opens his shirt to show scars and chunks of his flesh missing and tells Justine that he is sure she will be able to find a solution.
Vegetarian College Student Video
Cast
- Garance Marillier as Justine
- Ella Rumpf as Alexia
- Rabah Naït Oufella as Adrien
- Laurent Lucas as Father
- Joana Preiss as Mother
- Bouli Lanners as the driver
- Marion Vernoux as a nurse
- Jean-Louis Sbille as the professor
Release
Raw was screened in the International Critics' Week section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Prize.
During a screening at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, some viewers received emergency medical services after allegedly fainting from the film's graphic scenes. Ducournau said she was "shocked" to hear this during a Q&A after the screening.
The film had a limited theatrical release in the United States by Focus World starting on 10 March 2017.
Reception
Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an 90% approval score based on 145 reviews and an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's consensus states: "Raw's lurid violence and sexuality live up to its title, but they're anchored with an immersive atmosphere and deep symbolism that linger long after the provocative visuals fade." On Metacritic, it has an 81 out of 100 rating based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".
Catherine Bray of Variety wrote, "Suspiria meets Ginger Snaps in a muscular yet elegant campus cannibal horror from bright new talent Julia Ducournau." Katie Rife of The A.V. Club gave the film an A- grade, stating, "The strongest of the female-led films I've screened so far at the festival is Raw, Julia Ducournau's beautifully realized, symbolically rich, and disturbingly erotic meditation on primal hungers of all kinds."
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the film highly, giving it a rare perfect score of 4 out of 4 stars; going so far as calling it "a contender for best horror movie of the decade".
Nick Pinkerton of Sight & Sound gave a rather lukewarm review of the movie, labeling it "another unwieldy metaphor bundled in showy cinematography", citing the movie's "curatorial preciousness" as well as an over-all insistence on contrived set pieces.
In December 2017, film critic Mark Kermode named Raw the best film of 2017.
Awards
- 2016: FIPRESCI prize in the "parallel sections" category, conferred by a jury of the International Federation of Film Critics for a film at either the Directors' Fortnight or International Critics' Week running parallel to the Cannes Film Festival.
- 2016: Toronto International Film Festival, third place in the audience voting for the Grolsch People's Choice Midnight Madness Award.
- 2016: Sutherland Award, for most original and imaginative first feature at the London Film Festival.
- 2016: The film won two awards at the Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival :
- Golden Octopus of the best international fantastic movie
- Public Choice Award of the best international fantastic movie
- 2016: Flanders International Film Festival Ghent : Explore Award
- 2017: Prix Louis-Delluc for best first film
- It received four nominations at the 8th Magritte Awards, winning Best Foreign Film in Coproduction and Best Production Design.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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