Writer/director Julia Ducournau shook the world when she released her cannibal coming-of-age horror flick Raw in 2017, which caused two people to faint during the Midnight Madness screening at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016. She might have created a tradition, with Titane, her latest film, also causing one person to pass out during its Midnight Madness premiere at TIFF this year. This ferocious body horror movie is not for the faint of heart (and even for someone who usually loves ultra-violent body horror movies, some of it is very rough). However, if you can get past the film’s unflinching violence and gore, you may find the best Palme D’Or winner since David Lynch won top honors for Wild at Heart in 1990 and a maddening piece of genre cinema that will never, ever be replicated, as Titane could very well be the most original film of the year.
Describing Titane may sound like deciphering the craziest fever dream of your life, but trust me when I say that you’d want to know very little about the film before diving headfirst into it. It tells the story of a serial killer named Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), who has an unexpected pregnancy at the beginning of the movie. Wanted by the police for a series of murders, she pretends to be a boy named Adrien, who disappeared ten years ago and hides with his father, Vincent (Vincent Lindon), captain of a firefighting station. I’ll stop here before divulging any legitimate plot spoilers, but by reading these lines, you may think the director has created one of the most insane films of the new decade, and you’re absolutely right. Titane is unlike anything that was ever conceived in the world of body horror cinema, let alone cinema as a whole. Think of a David Cronenberg film to the tenth (or hundredth) power. Right from its opening sequence, where a car crash causes Alexia to get a titanium plate in her head, the film pulls you in with its impeccable sound design and cathartic timing and never lets you go.
As you start to drift away in its madness, Ducournau assures you’re awake for the entirety of the runtime with your eyes laser-focused on Alexia as she transforms herself from mechanophiliac serial killer to more human through her relationship with Vincent, all the while her body begins to have unique complications. The violence is raw (no pun intended) and unbelievably vicious. Doucournau always focuses her camera on Alexia during its murder sequences and never allows an exterior point of view to influence how the audience perceives the story. We’re only watching the film through her perspective, save for a few sequences that give us insight into Vincent’s tormented psyche. Both Lindon and Rousselle are impeccable in their roles, with Rousselle giving a star-making turn as the most intriguing female protagonist of the year. We don’t really understand how her impulse for killing correlates with her fetishistic desire for cars, but we can’t look away at how she interacts with other humans around her (or when she has sex with that car, to be perfectly honest, but it contains the most interesting human/car relationship I’ve seen since John Carpenter’s Christine, so there’s that).
Lindon is particularly excellent as a father longing for a connection with his lost son. He doesn’t even care how Adrien looks anymore, or if it is Adrien at all, he just wants to love again. It makes his performance the more heartbreaking when he looks at Alexia and doesn’t recognize his son or is angry at how Alexia/Adrien doesn’t talk to him. His overprotectiveness makes him quite distant as a “father figure” to Alexia, but it’s the little things that make their relationship blossom. An absurd sequence where Alexia saves someone through CPR as Vincent sings La Macarena or when they dance together through the sounds of Future Island’s Light House makes their distant relationship feel more wholesome as Alexia adopts Vincent as her new father, Vincent adopts Alexia as his new “son” — not caring who she is or what she has done. He just wants to love someone again, as much as he loved Adrien before he disappeared. And it makes the ending of the film all the more beautifully tragic.
What happens during its motor-oil filled climax shouldn’t be revealed by anyone, as the experience of having your jaw-drop in complete awe and utter disbelief as you start squirming in the most cathartic state of disgust possible is something you’ll have to experience for yourself either on the big screen or at home, as your mind goes “Oh no, no, no, no. Don’t watch this, please.” And yet, your eyes and body stay glued to the screen the entire time, not believing a single thing that’s unfolding in front of you, witnessing a beautifully disgusting opera of ultra-violence that only the director of Raw could ever dare come up with.
If Raw was a tender coming-of-age story through a sensual desire for the taste of human flesh, then Titane is a sweet and loving film on the power of family and the importance of human connection. Of course, if you can get past all of the gore and bodily violence the film throws at you, you’ll find the most creative film of the year, and a most heartwarming one at that, fueled by terrific lead performances from Vincent Lindon and Agathe Rousselle, and fiercely directed by one of the best up-and-coming genre filmmakers working today. Cinema is alive and well, and her name is Julia Ducournau. And I, for one, cannot wait to see what her ever-creative mind has in store for us next.
