Cannes film festival
The winner of the Palme d’Or for Titane delivers Cannes’ first true turkey: the tonally inept tale of a girl with a dodgy tattoo and a disease that turns people to marble
Strident, oppressive, incoherent and weirdly pointless from first to last … Julia Ducournau’s new film Alpha has to be the most bewildering disappointment of this year’s Cannes competition; even an honest lead performance from Mélissa Boros can’t retrieve it.
I admit I was agnostic about her much-acclaimed Palme d’Or winner Titane from 2021 but that had an energised purpose lacking in Alpha and Ducournau’s excellent 2016 debut Raw is still easily her best work.
