ALPHA. Love in the Time of Plague [REVIEW]

The End Times, but the nameless Mother (played by Golshifteh Farahani) still has something to fight for. First and foremost, she’s raising her thirteen-year-old daughter Alpha (Mélissa Boros) on her own—a girl turbulently navigating adolescence and drawn to questionable company. Into their already fragile home arrives an unexpected guest: Amin (Tahar Rahim), the mother’s older brother, a drifter, homeless, and utterly ravaged by heroin addiction. He’s a madman—unpredictable, dangerous, maybe even kind-hearted.

The bond between Farahani’s character and Alpha seems unbreakable, despite the frequent, unfiltered outbursts of anger and rebellion from the daughter. They can’t live without each other. The relationship with Amin, meanwhile, is rooted in something once familial, now transformed into a dynamic of caregiving—he’s more patient than sibling. That’s just who Farahani’s character is: if someone’s drowning, she’ll always reach out her hand.

Oh, and one more piece in this narrative puzzle: a strange virus has been rapidly spreading across the world for some time, turning people into stone. The body slowly hardens, taking on a gray hue, until every organ is transformed into lifeless rock.

There are many threads here—intimate ones built on emotional tension, and one with almost global scale. Is Julia Ducournau following up on the momentum of her last film, Titane, which won the Palme d’Or? In some ways, yes: the genre connections are plenty. But more importantly, she’s evolving—as a director and especially as a screenwriter. Alpha is a story dense with events and slowly escalating conflicts, stretched over a two-hour runtime.

Ducournau casts a multifaceted light on the stormy period of Alpha’s adolescence: the tension with her overprotective, professionally hypersensitive mother-doctor; symptoms of depression and all kinds of anxieties; her desire to escape the weight of her mother’s care, clashing with the inability to take her first independent step. Add in school crushes and traumas that result in painful, bloody consequences. Alpha dreams of being the life of the party, but more often than not finds herself cast as the outcast. These are extreme circumstances, but many mothers and daughters may find a resonant perspective in Alpha’s story.

Ducournau also weaves in shorter and longer flashbacks, sometimes almost imperceptibly. They serve various purposes: echoing the present events with a grim refrain, hinting at threads awaiting resolution, or, thanks to the director’s deft staging, merging past and present seamlessly. Farahani could have played the character as exhausted, resigned, or just in need of rest—but instead, the Iranian actress delivers a performance that radiates determination and unwavering strength.

Then there’s Tahar Rahim’s expressive, bold, even flamboyant performance—twisted, whether high or in withdrawal, physically transformed, with madness and absence in his eyes. It’s an acting tour de force: exaggerated, yes, but fitting perfectly within the film’s stylized tone.

Alpha is an ugly film. Unwelcoming, at times repulsive, and not one you’d rush to rewatch. And yet it strikes a wide range of emotional chords, envelops the viewer in mystery, and maintains a constant sense of unease. Ducournau balances precariously between a family drama and a film of impending doom. Alpha practically demands interpretation in light of the health crises of the past forty years. Perhaps it’s an allegory—broad in interpretive scope and rich with historical undertones.

But it is also undeniably a standalone story. A piece of pre-apocalyptic cinema. And sometimes, it’s best to simply stay on the surface of its narrative waters.