FrightFest review – Sanguine (Species)

Marion Le Coroller’s Sanguine – which would be a perfectly good English language title, and wasn’t used for a science fiction film in 1995 – has a look, feel and general theme (plus, you know, Frenchness) which puts it in a subset with Julia Ducournau’s Grave (Raw) and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance.  Indeed, it’s almost a mash-up of these pictures – junior doctor Margot Loiseau (Mara Taquin) tries to cope with a high-pressure internship in an ER while undergoing strange transformations which involve blood-leakage, skin-peeling and a soar-and-crash mood taking her from super-competent problem-solver to feral maniac.  The underlying ideas are slightly more in line with the David Cronenberg of Shivers, Rabid and Dead Ringers and the Larry Cohen of the It’s Alive films, proposing that the stresses of modern workplace life will trigger evolutionary mutations and possibly the uncomfortable, violent birth of a whole new – yes! – species.

A terrific cold open is set in a cathedral-like imaginary fast food outlet (Bloody Burger) as a pale-skinned, smiling employee of the month (Edouard Ducamp) is harangued by an influencer who wants a burger which is off the menu while a manager is timing the interaction and ready to fire the employee if it takes more than the allotted seconds to get to the next customer.  The employee knows he’s already been fired because this one asshole chose to hold up the line when he leaps over the counter and batters the guy to death.  Then, Margot is dropped off at the hospital by her devoted father – he’s an honest tradesman (a locksmith) and proud of her achievements – and shown to a grim, cell-like room on a residents’ corridor (the set design is excellent throughout) where the suicide-proof windows need to be jimmied to open (only to let in the sounds of traffic and pneumatic drills) and turning the slightly bloodstained mattress only uncovers more bloodstains (which, along with stories of the burnout Margot is replacing, are clues).  The interns are supervised by an icily practical doctor (Karin Viard) – nice guy Louis (Sami Outabali) describes her as ‘the Devil’ – who is as concerned as the fast food manager with getting customers seen to as quickly as possible and hustled out of the way, only with life or death decisions to be made rather than a choice of special sauces and toppings.

Margot is dead last in the ranking of the interns, with latest-of-a-long-line-of-doctors Pauline (Kim Higelin) outstanding in the class … then Margot reacts to the stress by bleeding from unseen wounds, developing unsightly rashes and undergoing profound psychological changes.  She also notices that others who come in to the ER have variations on her symptoms – a pregnant stock trader who must have sacrificed a lot to become the only woman in a shadowy market – and stories are spreading about incidences of people under twenty-five becoming homicidally violent.  As in Rabid, there’s a big story going on in the city but we stick with the protagonist, who is at once detective and mutant – Taquin is excellent in extremis, and Le Coroller gets close to her, keeping her in focus while the rest of the frame is in chaos.  A  detour into satire towards the end jars slightly with the tone of the rest of the film but this is a strong, absorbing picture.  Co-written by Thomas Pujol.