Species ★★

Since Coralie Fargeat‘s bloodthirsty body horror The Substance, Cannes has developed a taste for women-made genre fare deploying and often deconstructing the female physique as a source of aggression and abjection. While Marion Le Corroller‘s delirious debut feature shares the taste for blood, as evoked in the much more accurate French original title Sanguine, the angst of not complying with certain social expectations is curiously inverted. The dreaded failure for Mara Taquin‘s young protagonist Margot, a medical student training under the merciless supervision of highly respected Dr. Virgile (the always excellent Karin Viard), is purely cerebral. The impossible and on several levels inhumane performance targets of an achievement-oriented society are the humanitarian horror of this somewhat formulaic lesson in escalating efficiency. 

A seemingly unconnected but of course essential prologue set in a fast food chain ominously called “Bloody Burger” establishes the central theme of a young trainee cracking under grueling work stress. It’s a surreal scene where everything from the garish colors to the exaggerated behavior of the desperate employee, his sadistic superior and the arrogant customers involved is over the top. The gleefully gory gag makes clear from the start that empathy is the last thing the allegorical narrative aims for. This derisive tone of the hectic camera movements and cold images undermines any systemic critique nascent in Margot’s working-class origin. Her father proudly points out that she is the first doctor in the family, as he sees her off to the hospital. 

The towering building is no place for the weak, as Dr. Virgile rigorously points out: “If you feel fragile, I’d advise you to leave this department immediately.” It’s a rather cynical remark, given that the very purpose of hospitals is to care for the fragile. But care is replaced by mechanical processing in an institution that expects Margot and her fellow interns to treat more than two dozen patients per day. Due to her kindness and personal attention towards the patients, Margot falls far behind that rate, constantly on the verge of suspension. Her camaraderie with her pragmatic colleague Louis (Sami Outalbali) can’t alleviate the fear of failing which makes her sweat blood – literally. 

Though she has no visible wound, her sheets are covered in blood, and suspicious stains on the mattress in her cell-like room with anti-suicide windows suggest that she isn’t the first one to experience these symptoms. A pregnant patient working brutal shifts in the stock market describes similar signs of a mysterious transformation. Unfortunately, Le Corroller doesn’t know where to take her promising premise. Once Margot’s unraveling and eerie malaise are established, the plot stalls, regurgitating old information and adding details that are pointless at best and problematic at worst. One of these is a baby born without genitals which, in an era of right-wing paranoia about anything beyond the gender binary, carries uncomfortable bigoted connotations. 

As Margot experiences a sudden spike in her performance, accompanied by a decreased need for rest and sleep, her bizarre blood condition starts to look like a dehumanizing evolution. So, is an unrelenting high-performance work environment turning the young generation into automaton-like agender abnormalities who have lost all sympathy for others and themselves in exchange for hyper-efficiency? The cold setting, more reminiscent of a factory than a hospital, certainly suggests it. But the sardonic scenario’s own lack of compassion for its characters’ suffering and crucial lack of systemic insight thwart any credible critique of the French healthcare system or employment market. Contrary to its (original) title, Species remains frustratingly bloodless.