Short of the Week: Julia Ducournau’s first film ‘Junior’
While the body horror genre has been associated with directors like David Cronenberg for a long time, French auteur Julia Ducournau has been shaking things up. Although Ducournau has only made two major features so far, she is already recognised as one of the most prominent voices in the world of modern horror cinema.
Having studied screenwriting during her university years, Ducournau made waves with her 2016 debut feature Raw which completely redefined contemporary body horror. Starring Garance Marillier as a freshman at a veterinary school, Raw exposes the depravity of human desires by constructing a bizarre environment where medical students are addicted to human flesh. The recipient of multiple prestigious accolades, Raw proved to be a bright start for Ducournau’s emerging career.
For this edition of Short of the Week, we have gone back to Ducournau’s roots – her first short film which toyed with themes that she would expand on in her later works. Titled Junior, it marked the first collaboration between the director and Marillier. The latter delivered a fascinating performance as Justine (also known as Junior) – a pubescent tomboy who has a strange and visceral experience after contracting a stomach bug.
During an interview, Ducournau said: “I met Garance during the casting of Junior. She hadn’t acted before and was actually training to be a musician at school. I was looking for a tomboy, and because I was only seeing obedient little girls at the auditions, generally speaking, I decided to do another casting call that was much spicier. I wanted to find a 12 or 13-year-old girl who could be super-loud, masculine and not give a fuck.”
The director added: “Garance’s mom called us and said, ‘Listen, my daughter hasn’t done anything close to acting in her whole life, but this character is very much like her, so would you like to see her?’ When she came in, she looked like a vulnerable shrimp and was really cute with her baby face. But the moment she started improvising with me, she got up, and she let it go in a way that was so powerful and so disturbingly androgynous that I went, ‘Woah, what the hell is this hurricane?'”
Despite having little experience with acting, Marillier came across as explosive and showed all the signs of future stardom. Ducournau utilises the coming-of-age framework very well, oscillating between the mundane realm of school cruelty to the extraordinary domain of physical metamorphosis. Although the French director’s features have explored the nuances of the human body to greater extents, Junior is a perfect introduction for those who are unfamiliar with her brilliance.
Watch the film below.
