The film that Julia Ducournau couldn’t watch: “Unbearable”
As the queen of body horror herself, it’s hard to imagine Julia Ducournau being perturbed by the sight of any image, with her visceral and unflinching works causing people to watch them through their fingers. Whether it be her explosive debut feature Raw, following the sexual awakening of a young woman and her strange new cannibalistic impulses, or her Palme d’Or-winning film Titane, which became an urban legend after people claimed it caused a wave of fainting after its premiere.
Her films typically concern themselves with matters of the body, pushing the boundaries of the way we use and express our bodies, often boiling down to themes relating to unconditional love and acceptance as her characters explore themselves and find who they truly are. While some of the images might be grotesque, her stories are undeniably moving and profound – the sight of a woman having sex with a car suddenly becomes something else entirely, leaving you on the brink of tears.
However, while she has certainly created scenes that many struggle to watch, the director is not immune to this feeling herself, sharing the one movie that had a similar effect on her. Throughout the course of cinematic history, many films have been created that have sparked outrage and shock, whether it be Irreversible, Kids or Naked. The genre of provocative cinema has always been alive and well, with audiences retreating to cinema to be both comforted and disturbed. Ultimately, this is why we keep returning – to have new experiences and feel something that we otherwise wouldn’t in real life.
While Ducournau is operating in a league of her own, the director was inspired by one film that caused her to have an extremely visceral reaction, describing the haunting power of Christiane F, directed by Uli Edel in 1981. The movie follows the drug scene in 1970s Berlin and a 14-year-old girl called Christiane who finds herself being pulled deeper into a dangerous crowd.
When describing the films she finds hard to watch, Ducournau said, “No, but it’s funny because sometimes people ask me if there are some movies that I can’t watch, and, of course, like everyone, there are movies that I can’t watch. They’re not gonna be graphic movies necessarily, although they are graphic to me – movies like Christiane F.”
Adding, “It’s based on this book about a 13-year-old heroin-addicted prostitute. This movie seriously took me three days to watch it entirely to the end. It’s too heartbreaking, but it’s not even in the emotion or anything. It’s just that the image of kids putting syringes in their arms is, for me, unbearable.”
There’s a specific genre of cinema in which children are forced into highly adult situations, whether it be Taxi Driver, Leon: The Professional or Kids, something that appeals to our deepest instincts when watching young people being irrevocably harmed by an adult lifestyle. It is understandable why this would be so disturbing to Ducournau, and perhaps something that has seeped into her own work through capturing unsettling images that many struggle to look at.
