“Am I a strange girl? I think I’m strange”, Justine asks her mother. Justine’s symptoms reach fever pitch, as she begins to drip with sweat and exudes mucus as her skin begins to crack and peel off in chunks, her former self shedding off onto her bedroom floor. Something more sinister is at play, as that night Justine’s mother finds her leaning over the toilet, as her joints begin to crack. This disruption begins when Justine starts to feel unwell at school, as her behaviour grows increasingly erratic. The female body becomes grotesque as soon as it begins to deviate from societal norms, instead becoming a source of disruption to everyday life. Seeking to understand the connection between gender and the grotesque, Mary Russo in 1995’s The Female Grotesque describes the grotesque as that which “deviates from, undermines, or rejects normative constructions” of behaviour and bodies, especially those pertaining to gender difference. According to philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in his 1984 work Rabelais and his World, “Exaggeration, hyperbolism and excessiveness are generally considered fundamental attributes of the grotesque style.” The grotesque body “transgresses its own confines” and “in the act of becoming…it builds and creates another body.” Bakhtin’s physicalization of the grotesque takes it from the domain of the fantastical and gives it a sense of realism. The grotesque became synonymous with contemporary horror cinema in the 1990s, as an extension to Theatre of the Grotesque. Justine’s ambivalence and failure to conform make her physical transformation all the more grotesque. and then there’s Junior.” She is invisible, with no makeup, short skirts or heels that change the outside perception of the other teenage girls – in particular her popular older sister – from accepted to desired. Yet these forced attempts highlight how Justine is not accepted either by the girls or boys, who say: “I respect women not bitches. She attempts to participate in gendered banter in order to be considered one of the boys, burping in class for laughs, play fighting and labelling other girls as sluts, mimicking her male peers. She also feels disassociated from her female counterparts, preferring to go by ‘Junior’ instead of Justine. The film begins with Justine getting ready for school, where Justine is experiencing a temporal dissonance between herself and her own body. While the doctor dismisses her symptoms as a “classic case of stomach flu”, it soon becomes clear Justine is actually undergoing a complete physical transformation. “Mom I think I’m sick,” 13-year-old Justine aka ‘Junior’ bemoans as she clutches her stomach and turns increasingly pale. She has crafted her own unique cinematic universe, exploring the essence of femininity through society’s treatment of the female body, the foundations of which were built in her directorial debut, the 21-minute short film Junior released 10 years ago. Yet, Ducournau’s films achieve far more than mere provocation. Ducournau has become synonymous with the 21st century style of horror filmmaking known as New French Extremism, a term coined by James Quandt as a form cinematic extremity that uses intimate subject matters to break taboos. The idea of what it means to be a ‘monster’ is central to Ducournau’s work, with her feature debut Grave ( Raw) offering a gory depiction of cannibalistic desire and Titane set in a sleazy netherworld of murder, illicit sexual activities and graphic body modification. “Thank you to the Jury for letting the monsters in.” These were the words of Julia Ducournau as she made history as the second female director to be awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or prize in Cannes for her daring and provocative Titane. 10 years on, its Kafka-esque vision of the female body still remains central to the filmmaker’s work – Eleanor Brady explores the fantastical externalisation of the worst years of our lives. Before Titane and before Raw, master of body horror Julia Ducournau introduced her vision to the world with the metamorphic short film Junior.
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