Titane - 2021
This review may contain spoilers.
Titane is a wildly demented ride consisting of equal parts psychopathic violence and wide-eyed, big-hearted tenderness. Yeah, you read that combination correctly. After all, that seems to be the central tension (among many tertiary ones) of this new visionary work from Julia Ducournau. It is a film of two distinct parts, with major tonal shifts in each, that nonetheless is held together by its own (metallic) threads. Depending on how you feel about this welding (sorry, I just can’t stay away from the titanium puns) of body horror, found family melodrama, and, dare I say it, comic elements, Titane is either a clunker destined for the junkyard or a mystical, surreal work of genius.
The first question becomes whether or not your average filmgoer can get through the first 40 odd minutes of the picture. This portion introduces us to a menacing young girl (we’re never really told why), a distant father surely hiding secrets of his own (kudos to my friend J Tripp for pointing out the perpetual lack of direct eye contact between father and daughter here), and a series of grisly, almost nonsensical to the point of being black comic, murders. Oh, and I forgot to mention that our protagonist is a kind of exotic dancer for underground gear heads, gyrating on hoods and grills like distant cousins would poles.
This is Part 1 of our odyssey. It’s here where Ducournau revs us up with a kind of sociopathic take on Cronenberg’s Crashbefore letting loose with something else entirely. More importantly, the beginning of Titane is where you really catch the absolutely MASSIVE chops of this director. Her visual style and flair is there for the taking. We see it from the remarkable opening oner where Alexia strides confidently, with insouciance that is all punk rock and dispassionate distance, through a glitzy car show. Soon, Ducournau doubles down on the themes of bodies, their cravings, and what horror they can wrought which were first present in her exhilarating debut Raw.
As is often the case, the needle drops here add to the fever dream onscreen. My particular favorite is an extended sequence of an artistic kind of male bonding ritual, where firefighters are dancing and bumping into each other over the Future Islands “Light House.” Ducournau, besides being a stylist, is a mood maker. An atmospheric dynamo.
Another brief scene will further serve the trend. It’s also the moment where the picture reaches that frequency and pitch which are about as f-ed up as it gets. Alexia, the film’s lead, stumbles out of a shower and walks nude into a dark garage where she meets her prized car, headlights on, in the ready. The way that Julia and cinematographer Ruben Impens shoot this scene involves dark lighting in the far reaches of the frame, light in the distance, and water dripping off her figure as she marches towards an encounter with the machine. As Ehlrich noted, it’s more than a little like Scarlet’s blank vigilante alien in Under the Skin. The metaphors are less transparent and direct here, but it’s clear that metal is a part of Alexia, and she feels connected to machines. Whether this is due to her own mechanical nature and neuroses remains to be seen.
In any case, before we can really get over the initial assault on our senses, Titane pivots into entirely new spheres. To wit, the most jacked up story of found belonging and adoptive families you’ve ever seen. In essence, it’s the age old formula of lonely souls finding solace and connection in one another, with all new drapery. You know, if the female loner were a psychotic killer holding a rather…peculiar…secret, posing as a long lost son, and the father were an older beefcake shooting ‘roids into his cheeks to keep up the aggro masculine energy he fosters in his firehouse. Sure, this is the usual backdrop of found family melodramas everywhere.
But that’s just it for Ducournau. She never plays it safe. She dares to append a brave little yarn about belonging and gender fluidity to her French-baked Cronenbergian body horror. As those around the firehouse begin to unravel the layers of mystery, we become invested in where this will all lead. At least a part of the answer can be framed in the question - Does Vincent (the father figure) even care about the figure presenting him/herself as his son’s true identity? The answer, as it turns out, will surprise us. Because at its core, Titane is really about damaged souls finding one another.
It is a picture about trauma and anger, blurred gender identity, and the sometimes untapped potential in all of us to find our shared humanity. It’s truly a work of art that is confrontational in the way it assaults our senses. (The picture's shocking final sequence will surely live on). But, I agree wholeheartedly with what fellow reviewer Eric Trapp said in his own fantastic write-up - “What struck me most, however, was the balance in tone this film was able to achieve.” Titane is a film that congeals a little less neatly than Raw while being full of far more IMMENSE ideas and themes. The fact that it somehow walks this tightrope and has something significant to say makes it the wildest, yet vitally deserving, Palme d’Or winner that I can recall.
Comments