Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Contains spoilers from the outset Julia Ducournau would have been the last director to expect to win the Palme D’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for a film , Titane , about a female serial killer who has rough sex in the backseat of a car with the car itself. Since when did realism and serious intent get neglected by the jury? It turned out that Jury President, Spike Lee, forgot that he was supposed to wait until the end of the ceremony before announcing the Grand Prize, but then Spike doesn’t do anything conventionally. Titane gets more outrageous the longer it goes, with the protagonist’s nipples leaking oil rather than milk as she pretends to be a fire chief’s missing son whilst battling to contain her pregnant belly. The film retains a dark sense of humour and finally a point of human connection as the protagonist makes a sacrifice (of sorts) to the father she never knew she needed. The film pays homage to the so-called cinema du papa , a contentious French genre th...

  You are driving down a quiet country road at 30, maybe 40 miles an hour. All of a sudden, a young woman runs out from behind a tree. You swerve and crash the car. But your problems don’t end there. This is the opening of ‘Raw’, the uber-confident debut cinema feature of writer-director Julia Ducournau that puts new blood – quite literally – into the horror genre. Ducournau’s other credits include the ninety-minute TV movie ‘Mange’ (Eat) and a short film ‘Junior’. By her own admission, Ducournau makes films about transformations – young women seen as unthreatening assume a confidence and strength that is terrifying. ‘Raw’ is about cannibalism, in which a young first year veterinary school student, Justine (Garance Marillier) discovers a hitherto suppressed taste for flesh, after eating meat for the first time and then being exposed to the human variety. Her nightmare begins from the moment she is dropped off by her parents. Justine’s possessions are turned out of her dorm. F...

  Pictured: Agnes Shakespeare ( Jessie Buckley , centre) is expectant at a production of her husband's play, 'Hamlet' in a scene from the film, ' Hamnet ', directed by Asian-American auteur,  Chloë  Zhao . Still courtesy of Focus Features . Between Friday 21 February 2025 and Sunday 8 February 2026, I have watched and reflected on a further fifty-two feature films directed by women. The challenge just to watch the films – not to review them – was set by Melissa Silverstein, founder and publisher of ‘Women in Hollywood’, in 2015. I consciously select feature films and not documentaries and only those intended for cinema, that is, commercial release. My rationale is these films are made to compete in a global marketplace. By demonstrating their artistic worth and commercial appeal, these films advocate for more films from women directors to be greenlit, addressing prejudice. Many of these films I watch at festivals. In the case of this volume, at Berlin, Brussels, ...

Pictured : Amin ( Tahar Rahim ) and Alpha ( Mélissa Boros ) in a scene from ' Alpha ', the third feature film from writer-director Julia Ducournau . Still courtesy of Neon (US), Curzon (UK), Diaphana Distribution (France) French writer-director Julia Ducournau has made two bold, kinetic horror films, Raw and Titane in which women behave very badly. She fuses ‘out there’ elements, like a car impregnating a woman or bloodsucking at a medical school, with family dynamics. In those first two movies, not only are no f-ks given, none are offered. Alpha , her third feature, which returned empty handed from the Cannes Film Festival, the site of her 2021 unexpected triumph with Titane , is different. The genre elements – specifically a disease that turns people into crumbling statues – don’t emanate from the protagonist, thirteen-year-old Alpha (Mélissa Boros). Rather, they are observed from without. Ducournau employs flashbacks in which Alpha’s father, Amin (Tahar Rahim) struggles...