Film Review: ALPHA (2025): Mélissa Boros Delivers a Great Performance in a Misguided Effort from the Director of TITANE
Alpha Review
Alpha (2025) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Julia Ducournau and starring Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani, Mélissa Boros, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield, Fadila Belkebla, Jean-Charles Clichet and Driver.
Titane came out in 2021 and was instantly one of the most controversial pictures of the year with its half human/half car baby theme. If that theme makes no sense, don’t worry, you’d have to have seen the picture to have any idea what was going on in it. Now, French director Julia Ducournau brings to the screen her most ambitious film to date, Alpha.
Ducournau’s latest takes on topics that were volatile in the 1990’s, but weren’t always captured on film in quite the raw and gritty manner in which Ducournau’s Alpha takes them on head-first. Alpha is a picture driven by its main performance by Mélissa Boros in the title role. Boros plays the 13-year old, Alpha, who experiences a hellish world of brutal self-discovery when she gets a tattoo that becomes infected. This film deals with the AIDS epidemic from its chosen time period and does so in a very haphazard way at times that only occasionally hits the mark over the course of the two-hour picture.
Alpha’s mom (Golshifteh Farahani) has nothing but the best of intentions for Alpha, but when the mother’s brother, Amin (Tahar Rahim) arrives in the action, the movie delves deep into the bond between Alpha and her AIDS-stricken uncle who suffered through relapses and is a certified drug addict. This movie spares no images of needles going under the skin either for drug use or for tattoo creation and those who may wince at the sight of blood or needle-using should probably not choose this as a film to watch. Alpha’s school eventually needs proof that Alpha is not infected by any sort of disease which the mother ultimately provides.
This movie zeroes in on the bond between Amin and his sister as well as the one formed by Amin and Alpha. While the film offers a harrowing experience, there are some realistic moments of family interaction that shape and develop the characters when they’re not going through emotional or physical turmoil. Boros shines in the pivotal central role as she brings a lot of subtext to her character through her mannerisms and facial expressions. Also quite solid is Tahar Rahim as the long-suffering uncle to Alpha who may or may not learn to cope with his eventual dire fate.
Alpha offers the premise of people infected by diseases turning to stone (either partially or completely). This drags the movie out of a realistic realm and makes it feel more supernatural than anything else at times. Red dust in the air during a storm at the picture’s ending has a lot of heavy-handed symbolism that it adds to the story line, but the film may have worked better with a more realistic approach to the material. This concept of people dying of AIDS is scary enough without the need for ways to stylize and reflect on the film’s theme through seemingly supernatural plot twists. It’s not that most of what happens in Alpha couldn’t happen, it’s that it happens in a way that feels far-fetched and more fictitious than it had to be.
While the movie is directed with precision, it also sometimes falters along the way. That is to say the topic of kids bullying Alpha isn’t dealt with convincingly. It’s due to the fact that the mechanics of the plot merely function to develop it more rather than shape the actual characters who aren’t always written as well as they could have been. For example, Amin can come across as one-dimensional at times despite Rahim’s most earnest efforts as an actor.
That being said, Boros is a natural born actress whose role in the movie is large enough to keep viewers invested in her as a character. Alpha is smart and comes across smarter than what is on the page thanks to Boros’ sincerely compelling work. Meanwhile, Farahani, as the concerned mother, has a lot on her plate in what is a larger role in the action than what was initially expected. Alpha suffers through trauma while her mother tries to help her overcome her sadness if that is at all possible.
Alpha features a well-conceived premise in search of a movie that would cater more to the bizarre logistics of its plot. It’s all about human suffering and the way it grabs hold of human beings either infected by a virus or related to those infected by a disease and never lets go. It’s the human condition under a magnifying glass during a time of crisis where things were frightening whether one was clean or actually contaminated.
Alpha won’t win its acclaimed director many new fans. Quite simply, it’s a step down from Titane. Whereas the filmmaker’s previous film pulled out all the stops with its haunting story line, Alpha leaves more to the imagination at the end. That’s a choice I respect given the disturbing nature of the material here. I wanted to love Alpha, but found myself inappropriately disturbed by how much more it could have been than it actually turned out to be. These performances here are all on-point in the film. Emma Mackey (always intriguing) even makes a brief appearance as a nurse. Maybe the story feels too over-the-top for its own good and maybe Ducournau wanted it exactly that way for her own reasons. She’s a brave filmmaker who is dangerously testing the waters this time out.
Rating: 6/10
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