‘Titane’, the film written and made in 2021 by Julia Ducournau is a shocking movie. While writing this sentence, I am also surprised to think if anything can still be considered shocking compared to what we see in the news these days. What is perhaps shocking is that this film, so extreme, so strange in many of its thematic elements, so graphic in its violence, did receive last year’s ‘Palme d’Or’ at Cannes. (Full disclosure, it was also nominated for the unofficial Queer Palm Award for LGBT-themed films.) Actually, the decision of the jury may be more reasonable than it seems. ‘Titane’ is an extraordinarily well-made film, a film that proposes a combination of exciting actual topics, a magnetic film that you can’t break away from while watching if you survived the first ten minutes. Some movie fans will give up watching the first or second tough scene, but those who resist will not regret it. It’s hard to believe that Julia Ducournau is only at her second feature film. Among the directors who propose feminine and feminist themes, she already occupies her place, coming from the perspective of extreme films.
‘Titane’ begins as a family drama combined with a science fiction movie. A little girl named Alexia is harassing her father while he is driving on the highway and a traffic accident occurs. She is injured at her had and undergoes a titanium implant. After leaving the hospital, she hugs the car. Flash-forward. 15-20 years have passed. Alexia has become an eccentric young woman with a passion for cars. She sells them performing exotic dances, even has sex with a car (a grotesque scene) and gets pregnant (!). In her private life , she is a serial killer. When the police gets close, she changes her face (another scene you will hardly forget) and adopts the identity of a a young man, Vincent’s son, the head of a fire station, who has disappeared for ten years. The disguise is imperfect, but the aging man, who has his own problems, wants more than anything to believe that the effeminate and strange young man who does not say a word is the lost son. Alexia and Vincent seem to come from two different worlds. A special and strange relationship is created between them, special and strange like everything we see in this movie.
Titane’ gives me another confirmation that quality movies can be made in any genre, including extreme movies, sometimes labeled ‘trash horror’. The premises seem completely ridiculous, they are of course unrelated to reality or biology. But even these premises contain an acid irony about the passion for cars (and the films that exemplify it) and a reflection of an anguish discussed by experts in future and philosophers as a result of the hybridization of the human body, which is becoming more and more common, with prostheses and artificial implants aimed at repairing the bodies after accidents or even prolonging life. The relationship between Alexia and Vincent tells a lot about trust between people, about frustrated parenting, about machoism, and about accepting those who are different. The interpretations of the two actors in the lead roles are formidable. Vincent Lindon is an actor that I appreciate a lot, including the fact that he chooses very well the roles and the directors he works with. For Agathe Rousselle, the role in ‘Titane’ is her feature film debut, and her dedication to a difficult role, both physically and psychologically, is remarkable. After such a debut, the expectations can only be high. The make-up with which the actress is ‘adorned’ also deserves a special mention. What can I say about Julia Ducournau? She wrote and made a different film, a film that proves that she is not afraid to shock, and that she is able to create artistic emotion and please fans of extreme at the same time. ‘Titane’ has been compared by many to David Cronenberg’s films – ‘Crash’ for the theme of passion for cars, ‘Crash’ but also others for the audacity to create horror’by mutilating the human body. The truth is that in ‘Titane’ Julia Ducournau overtook Cronenberg in the field that was his own 25 years ago. It remains to be seen how she will evaluate and how, as a director, she will manage to surpass herself in the next films.