Alpha Just Dropped a Teaser—and Cannes Is Already Holding Its Breath
Neon simply launched a 30-second teaser for Alpha, Julia Ducournau’s third characteristic and—judging by this blink-and-flinch footage—her most emotionally loaded grenade but. The movie premieres tonight on the Cannes Movie Pageant, however cinephiles are already dissecting each body prefer it’s a sacred relic from the Church of Cronenberg.
That is Ducournau’s first time again within the area since Titane detonated the Palme d’Or in 2021, dividing audiences like a rusted scalpel. Now, she’s returned with Alpha, a dirty, Nineteen Eighties-set coming-of-age nightmare that includes a 13-year-old lady, a single mom, and a tattoo which may as nicely be the Mark of the Beast.
What’s Actually Going On? Or: Why a 30-Second Tease Feels Like a Full-Physique Post-mortem
You solely want one element to know the stakes: Alpha opens with a toddler coming residence from faculty with a recent tattoo. Not a scraped knee. Not a detention slip. A tattoo. It is the type of inciting incident that virtually screams, “buckle up, it will get worse.”
Ducournau’s option to solid newcomer Mélissa Boros as Alpha, reverse the always-haunting Golshifteh Farahani (Paterson), alerts a narrative rooted in feral intimacy. However this is the kicker: the teaser would not attempt to promote you the movie. It dares you to outlive it. There is no exposition, no emotional tender touchdown—simply cryptic flashes and a guttural line: “You do not bear in mind me?”
It is giving Carrie by the use of Tsai Ming-liang—when you swapped the buckets of blood for ink and mother-daughter silence.
Beneath the Pores and skin: Ducournau’s Tattooed Psyche and the Curse of the Sophomore (Now Third) Droop
Let’s get brutally trustworthy: following up Titane is like making an attempt to scream louder than your personal echo inside a metallic coffin. The final time she touched cinema, she made folks stroll out, cry, chuckle, vomit—and, crucially, suppose. Now, Alpha appears to pivot from the physique horror of Uncooked and Titane towards one thing extra haunted by reminiscence than mutilation.
Or perhaps not. Possibly the tattoo is simply the beginning. Neon has properly locked the remainder of the plot in a vault. However understanding Ducournau, that ink could possibly be a portal, a trauma marker, an emblem of inherited ache—or all three.
The teaser’s setting—a New York-inspired fever dream shot in Le Havre—evokes a gritty nostalgia extra emotionally uncooked than visually slick. Assume Youngsters meets Possession—if both of these movies had the center to heart feminine rage with out sanitizing it for the academy crowd.
The Tattoo Is Actual. The Trauma’s Coming. Are You Prepared for ‘Alpha’?
So right here we’re: a cryptic teaser, a Palme-winning director, and a Cannes premiere loaded with expectations. Alpha could possibly be Ducournau’s The Piano second—intimate, tragic, seething. Or it may implode below its personal ink-stained ambitions.
Regardless of the case, we’ll be watching. Intently. Possibly by our fingers.
Now you resolve: Is Ducournau the voice of a style revolution—or simply trolling us with trauma?