Julia Ducournau & Tahar Rahim On Alpha: An Empire Podcast Interview Special

0:14Hello pod, I'm Chris Hewitt and welcome to another Empire Podcast interview special. Julia Ducournau is the brilliant French director behind Raw and the Palme d 'Or winning Titan, two films that earned her a reputation as the queen of body horror and perhaps the modern heir to David Cronenberg. Her third film, Alpha, is out now in the UK and is something of a change of pace, as it tells the story of a young girl, Alpha, played by Melissa Boros. It is a slower, more meditative, less gory film than Raw or Titan, charting Alva's emotional connection with her mother, played by Golshifte Farahaneh, and her uncle, played by Tahar Rahim, who you know, of course, from A Prophet and Madame Web.

0:57In fact, Rahim was paired with Du Corneau for this interview with her very own Jamie Graham, which was conducted when the film played at the London Film Festival last month. They were in a London hotel room, Jamie was on his laptop, but hopefully the sound will be okay. It is an absolutely cracking interview, this one, so let's get to it enjoy so julia and tahar welcome to the empire podcast hi nice to meet you how are you really well it's lovely to see you both today how are you good we're doing great actually that's all fun a little bit tired but uh you know it's always better on the edge so of course that's how you live life i know i know now i wanted to start by saying Raw was met with Rave Reviews, your debut film, and then T-Town obviously won the Palme d 'Or.

1:51I imagine the world was your oyster. You could do anything you wanted. Why Alpha?

2:00I love the idea. I mean, the world is my oyster. It depends on which world you're talking about. I mean, if your question is, did the palmedore had an impact on what was going to happen next? Then no, it didn't. Like this is a story that I had in mind for a long time and that I was actually postponing because I really thought it was going to be one of my late movies. Whenever that is, I have no clue. But I still felt that I needed to be somewhat older, more experienced in order to tackle the mother figure, which is not an easy one to tackle at all. And so I, you know, I at one point started working on something else that I threw after nine months in the garbage because I felt that I was repeating myself and that it was in that way kind of like barren, barren, you know, soil to create anything.

2:56and so I decided that in order to seek for my zone of uncomfort, of discomfort I was going to make the one that I was keeping for later now, basically and so I did but the world with my oyster it's very fun to say I didn't feel like this I didn't feel every time you go back to another movie it feels like you're going back from scratch Like, am I going to be able to do that once again? Sure. Now, Tahir, I imagine you didn't need much persuading to sign on the dotted line for this working with Julia. No, I didn't. So what was it that immediately attracted you? It's such a great part. Oh, what attracted me first was Julia and her unique vision, first off, before I even read the script.

3:56Because I was a big fan of Raw and Catan, and each time I would see one of her movies, I would, you know, witness something new and different. And it's very rare to see this, so you want to be a part of it at some point. you know part of this creative process so when i knew that she wanted to work with me i was uh very happy very excited and when we first met we had a coffee together to talk about the script and you know get to know each other better and uh i had a gut feeling that this uh uh creative relationship will be unique and amazing and uh on the first day of shooting it proven to be right because it clicked right away on the first take.

4:45And it felt like we've, as if we were, as if we worked together again in the past. So when you feel that, it allows you to just dive, jump, without a safety net and trust 100 % your director. And that's the best gift a director could give to an actor. so I could find the freedom to just, you know, lose myself through character. I want to talk about your scenes with Melissa Boros, who's absolutely extraordinary in this film. Now, she plays a teenager who, apart from that in itself, is hard enough just being a teenager living day to day. She's worried that she's become infected with this disease.

5:30So that's hanging over her. Your character, Armin, is a heroin addict. now you two when you first meet you're her uncle she doesn't know you she doesn't trust you but you develop this really tender connection so how did you guys kind of nurture that relationship behind the scenes it was written most of all no really i mean when you go back to the script and then you start to build it what you hope is that the magic happens between you and your acting partner. And I think we got connected pretty quickly because if how can I put it? She is a newcomer and she starts with a big burden on her shoulder being the main with a great director.

6:19And that's exactly what I've been through. When I first started with The Prophet, I was a newcomer and I had the responsibility to carry a movie. and I felt for her because I know how scary it is and how hard it is and that you don't have a choice but giving everything you have because it has to work and then I remember a day I felt she was really stressed and I showed up when we wrapped I just knocked on her door and I said listen let's have a tea and started to talk and I remember saying to her, look, you don't need to seek love from anybody. Don't run. And she's like, no, but I'm fine. I'm fine.

7:10She wouldn't tell. Everybody loves you. You don't need that. What you need is to find self-confidence to have fun and just to blossom and just take advantage of what's happening now. Because it's not going to happen twice anyway. If you live an adventure just once, then it changes. Everything is unique somehow. And I think it created a bond that influenced our relationship in the story, in the fiction. yeah no it really shows now julia obviously raw dealt with cannibalism titan had a woman having sex with a car and everyone kind of focused on those things but both films seem to me to be about human emotion they were about loneliness they were about rage about love now this film is surely your most emotional yet it kind of gets straight to the heart of the matter no pun intended puts the emotion front and center i mean do you see it like that Absolutely.

8:14Yeah, definitely. I think, honestly, I think it stems from the same gesture that started raw. This same, like, I think, search for both trying to understand where our humanity resides, to which I absolutely have no answer for. I just can keep, you know, searching and, you know, digging deep into an honest dive into my own humanity and our common humanity. I think that those three films have in common as well the concept of unconditional love of elected family, which is very dear to me. even if in that case the family is actually people related by blood when it's the case of, I mean, an alpha. They still have, as you said before, he's a stranger to her at the beginning so they still have to tame each other, to accept each other and to learn to make each other grow throughout the film.

9:18And in many ways she teaches him to be able to let go. she's actually the reason why he's finally able to go and he obviously teaches her and guides her into kind of like breaking the cycle of repeated trauma that unwillfully can you say that? Unwillingly her mom imposes on her out of fear and out of overprotection in many ways So I really do believe in the concept of election, no matter what, as far as family, sometimes, and it's been going through. So you see, to me, this is just trying to dig deeper and deeper in this concept. And in that way, to expose myself more, to also try to challenge myself more in that sense, because you see, the way Titan was built up is that in the last tower, it was built up towards the last 15 minutes, where the unconditional love between my characters was actually named and accepted and fully blown in many ways.

10:34And I always wondered why I said this in the last 15 minutes of my film and why they had to go through everything that they had been through, each one on their sides and even when they meet, in order to get there. And, you know, there is this thing that at the end they say, I love you to each other in Titan. And I had a lot of trouble with this. I love you. I put it in the script, took it out, put it in, deleted it. I did take some of the sets with, takes without, takes with, takes without. Editing room. I put it in the film, take it out. And then I was like, what's my problem with I love you?

11:10It's, these are the words that have been the most said in every single film, in every single language of the world since the beginning of cinema. And I'm clearly blocking on it. And I think I was scared of the cliché that it presents. And yet a cliché sometimes has its reason to be because when you use such a cliché, this is when your characters go from being simple characters to actual heroes. And that's why in the end I decided to leave it in the film. But then I thought, since that was such a blockage for me, since it was so difficult for me to give birth to this I love you, I'm going to try to make a film that is an I love you from A to Z.

11:46now moving forward I mean disease in this film plays a big part it's kind of a big backdrop of the movie that people are getting infected by this disease this virus that is passed through sex and by needles now I think you've gone on record of saying it's inspired from the fact you grew up in the 80s and 90s when the AIDS epidemic epidemic was a very bleak scary thing I mean is that true is that where you kind of took your inspiration oh yeah for sure i mean i think the parallel with the with the aid the peak of the aids pandemic uh in the 90s is clearly shown not just through like the trans you know the transmission of the disease as you said sex and and um and ivs but mainly to me through the way society treats the patients in my film and it's not a movie that is about AIDS per se and that's why I did not want to use the symptoms of AIDS and to name it as it is.

12:51If it had been a movie about the AIDS crisis in the 80s, 90s, I think I would have done a way more historically accurate movies and I would have named the disease, obviously. Here I felt that I needed to create my own disease for the reason that for me, the thing that I'm trying to expose in that film is how when fear seeps into the crevices of society, it generates an effect, obviously, of rejection and of hate that trickles down generations, that creates a trauma and trickles down the generation, and how this trauma is transmitted because the grief that the patients felt, the suffering of those patients and the grief of the families was completely denied to them, utterly denied.

13:41We told them at the time that it was their fault if they were going to die, that it was because of their lifestyle. They were shamed for their lifestyle. And that's something that unfortunately created such a trauma, such a taboo, that this stigma still exists nowadays, even though medicine has advanced and we have treatment that allows nowadays people who are infected with HIV to live a full life, the social stigma is still very long. And I think that the reason for that is that there was never any reparation, any apologies in any way that anyone said what happened at that time was absolutely inhumane.

14:22And that was absolutely not acceptable on the part of an entire world, an entire civilization, the society. And that's more like what I'm trying to expose here is that it's how society creates their own trauma through the rejection and the shaming of a part of its population. You definitely grant the dying in this film a lot more dignity than society did back in those days. so yeah so uh tahar i just wondered i mean can you talk a little bit about your transformation in this movie because you play someone who's a heroin addict he's infected and like both physically and psychologically the transformation is amazing i mean you must have gone through a lot thank you yes i've been through a lot yes yes yeah there's the process of weight loss which was really important and i was surrounded by a medical team just uh to reach my goal uh safely and i did but um yeah i had to you know eat less eat less and uh specific uh food work out a lot and then the hardest the hardest thing to to lose is the muscle yeah that's when the story gets harder.

15:47You have to eat less protein a day, specific veggies, so you start to lose energy. I remember taking vitamin C impermanently to be able to do my job. To function. To walk around, talk. That was the physical aspect, but all of it was inherent to the project. So I had to do it, whatever happens. Otherwise, you wouldn't believe in it, and I wouldn't believe in it, nor Julia. Yeah. But then everything was made to lead me to his inner world, because the physicality helped me to build his soul somehow, his emotions. and I did my homework as a good student and I volunteered in the facility that helps people suffering from addiction that gives them a space to have a social life to uh to just try to to have better life as well because some of them have stopped using and they even work in this facility and so it's great and it allowed me to their most vulnerable state I mean the ritual of using they allowed me to film them to record them, to talk with them it was harsh but it helped me a lot to see through their through what you just see on surface you know it's remarkable absolutely remarkable julia now i know that um you're a big horror fan and all of your movies so far have had elements of body horror in if you want to call it body horror no i don't no i don't no what what do you want to drama and also i don't like labels as you know i think my movies are hybrid and mutant definitely that's how i that's how i love them yeah no but i just wondered But if we do go on the bodily issues, Cronenberg always called it body conflict.

18:06Yeah, I love this idea. I think it suits him very well. And he's so smart to imply something that is so philosophical and at the same time sociological within this concept. And I do believe, as far as I'm concerned, that the body is truly seen by society as a place of taboo still. it's seen as a place of secrecy something that an experience that everyone has to live on their own that people are not too keen on sharing whether because it's gross or it's embarrassing or it's serious and then you have to go through your own vessel on your own and I think this is a very social thing I think this is really to abide by what's acceptable socially that we can't talk about this and on the contrary I do believe that the vulnerabilities that our bodies make us go through on a daily basis are actually what can have us commune, that it can form the communion, that it can create empathy between us and, you know, way more understanding of what the others are going through.

19:15And that's how I like to see bodies as a place of communion. and in many ways the way I believe the body work is also the same way as I believe the society work, especially when we're talking about trauma and denial and so in many ways the bodies in my film and especially in Alpha reflect the state of the society literally in Alpha they petrify the same way the society petrifies as far as fear is concerned and as far as the pandemic is concerned. I just wondered, I mean you you're a father you you've got four children i believe do any of your kids have they seen any of your movies because i know julia julia was watching texas chainsaw massacre when she was six years old she's told me that i didn't know when i was watching okay okay but it still amazes me it's wonderful i saw friday the 13th when i was eight so i'm not too far behind but i just wondered i mean have your kids seen any of your films because they're all young Oh yeah, true Mufasa Because I voiced it in Friends So the side And Aznavour My big son, Fyfe The big one Almost nine But for the rest, I think they'll wait Until they're, I don't know, 28 years old So they haven't seen a prophet yet Of a more Italian I would be crazy, Daddy that would that would how about madam web have they seen that my son started to watch it i tried and it was too scary oh that's a very i was like tell me when it's uh and he got scared like that i'm a little scared i'm like yeah forget about it so final question because our time's up but julia i wanted to ask you the world you create in this film?

21:13I mean, it's such a mooted palette and everything's dilapidated and I'm never sure, watching it, I wasn't sure if it's a kind of grim reality or it's a near future dystopia or whether it's Alpha's state of mind or is it all three of those things? What were you going for? It's funny that you use the word dystopia because I do believe that there are things that happened in the 90s that nowadays we believe that it's impossible that it would never happen like this and yet it happened. I'm aiming right now at a very specific scene which is the scene when the teacher is actually thrown a slur, a homophobic slur in his face in front of everybody by one of your students.

22:00And it's the fact that you would call this scene a dystopian. A little bit breaks my heart because it means that we forget very easily. And that also no one, as I said before, about having no reparation as far as the LGBT communities, the drug addict communities at the time who were the first one targeted by the um you know moral judgments of the rest of society we tend to forget how bad that was at the time because no one ever talks about it right and the fact that this scene can be seen as something that is um this token is unfortunately what I have been a witness of when I was a teenager in school.

22:56And people would not come to save the teacher or the person who had been called the F-slur. They would laugh at it because it was funny to them. And with every single time where fear is engaged on a global level, you will always have a rise of homophobia, of misogyny, and of xenophobia. is almost unescapable, but we tend to not want to see this in us. And it's happening right now, actually. And I really wonder if we made a movie about right now in 20 years, if it would feel like it's a dystopia. Yeah, I'm sure it would, sadly. But anyway, guys, thank you so much for joining us on the Empire podcast and enjoy the rest of your day.

23:43Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Take care. Bye. Okay, that was the clash of the alphas. Okay, that was an alpha level interview. Jamie Graham talking to Tahar Rahim and Julia Ducournau about alpha, which, in case you needed reminding, is in UK cinemas now. Go check it out, folks. And that is it for this very special interview special. More to come on the Empire Podcast regular feed and spoiler special feed as ever. And if you haven't already got tickets for our next live show at King's Place in London on Friday, January 9th, then head to kingsplace.co.uk and snap them up for they're going fast.

24:24OK, that's enough from me. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Bye bye.