No cure for this disease movie.
In what appears to be in the tradition of the AIDS/HIV epidemic in the 80s, here’s a bone-borne disease spreading around, and it kills you by turning you into marble. Think of it almost like being touched by King Midas with his golden touch. The early stages of that consist of people partly looking paler and coughing up dust. CGI dust that is. And you better hope when a doctor examines the marble skin, you don’t bleed out red dust or even rocks.
That’s the disease going around in “Alpha,” the latest film from French filmmaker Julia Ducounau, who gave us the brilliant “Titane.” Now, looking at the marble people is quite interesting, and maybe it would look better in an Italian film by Luca Guadagnino, but unfortunately, “Alpha” is bogged down by its tepid mother-daughter relationship as well as a heroin subplot that tries to emerge itself in the movie outbreak. Even for a French film, it all feels exhausting.
At the worst possible time, the title girl Alpha (Mélissa Boros) gets a hand poke tattoo of an “A” on her arm at a party, ands her single doctor mother (Golshifteh Farahani) worries it may be infected. Her wound bleeds every now and then, and she becomes ridiculed at her school, who think she’s infected. She even gets her head smacked during a swim meet and everyone abandons her when she turns part of the water red. Funny, because I reviewed “The Plague,” which also featured young swimmers and bullies avoiding someone who they label as infected a few months ago.
About the marble disease, we see flashbacks in Mexican filters when the mother is dealing with the patients. There’s a moment at the hospital when so many patients are waiting outside and only a few are allowed inside. She’s overwhelmed, as she should be. We’ve had the COVID-19 pandemic, and almost all of us have seen movies like “Contagion” and “Outbreak.” So, it’s pretty realistic in a sense.
And here’s the heroin subplot. Alpha’s junkie uncle Amin (Tahar Ramin) has an introduction when little Alpha draws lines on his needle marks. Years later, he enters their home, and not remembering who he is, she thinks he’s a criminal and holds a knife at him. But he knows she can’t stab him and her mother clarifies that he’s staying with them for a while to fight against his addiction.
There are times when Alpha struggles with panic attacks and how she navigates through the pandemic, and there are times when Amin can’t be trusted regarding his addiction. And there are times when we wonder whether the main characters test positive or negative for the disease. And it all seems repetitive.
Ramin is well-acted in the role of Amin and his dialogue is poetic through his development, but Farahani and Boros seem to be going through the motions. Their mother-daughter relationship shows an intense love for each other, and it’s indulged in the apparent rule that daughters aren’t supposed to grow up and mothers are supposed to be the enforcers. And even when lullabies are heard in flashbacks or the present, it never really stands out. At least it isn’t as immature as how Allison Williams and Mckenna Grace displayed it in “Regretting You.” So, if this were an American film, then it probably would feel tiring.
Ducounau is a filmmaker who specializes in the body horror genre, and she makes “Alpha” look and feel great with the marble make-up and effects and a reminder of the AIDS/HIV pandemic. But this movie goes all over the place, and it doesn’t really stand out for the main characters and what reality they live in. The trailers and posters make it look cool, and it should be a cool movie. But it ends up being disappointing.
