I’ve been making a point to hunt down the early short films and lesser-known works by some of my favorite directors recently, and it’s been fascinating so far. I love seeing what these filmmakers are able to do with rudimentary tech and shoestring budgets. Even more, I love the sense I get while watching, of all the last wandering threads of inspiration finally weaving together, tracing a direct line through their works so I can finally fully understand these ideas they’ve been ruminating and working on for so long, waiting for the right time and the proper tools to fully realize them.
Junior was Julia Decournau’s first on-screen attempt at exploring the torturous toll that puberty takes on young women, an idea that she would take flight with more completely in 2016’s Raw. Here though, she still manages to show the unique horror that is growing up, complete with all the grotesque and disturbing changes within your body that you cannot control. When it comes to the grotesque and the disturbing, Julia never shies away, and her surrealist depiction of physical tumult within the character of Junior is another body-horror laden piece of cruel, unapologetic magic.
I’ve been making a point to hunt down the early short films and lesser-known works by some of my favorite directors recently, and it’s been fascinating so far. I love seeing what these filmmakers are able to do with rudimentary tech and shoestring budgets. Even more, I love the sense I get while watching, of all the last wandering threads of inspiration finally weaving together, tracing a direct line through their works so I can finally fully understand these ideas they’ve been ruminating and working on for so long, waiting for the right time and the proper tools to fully realize them.
Junior was Julia Decournau’s first on-screen attempt at exploring the torturous toll that puberty takes on young women, an idea that she would take flight with more completely in 2016’s Raw. Here though, she still manages to show the unique horror that is growing up, complete with all the grotesque and disturbing changes within your body that you cannot control. When it comes to the grotesque and the disturbing, Julia never shies away, and her surrealist depiction of physical tumult within the character of Junior is another body-horror laden piece of cruel, unapologetic magic.
