Titanium-Plated Lunacy
Julia Ducournau throws her hat in the ring for title of bloodiest and oiliest French feminist director working with a divisive, gender confronting emotional family drama. Uh huh. You read that right.
titane
Director: Julia Ducournau • Writer: Julia Ducournau
Starring: Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier, Bertrand Bonello
France/Belgium • 1hr 48mins
Opens Hong Kong Apr 21 • III
Grade: A
Titane is batshit crazy.
That’s meant in the best way possible. It’s hard to describe what’s going on in the film, because to say too much would be to spoil not the story per se, but its peculiar emotional sensitivity and graceful statements about love, affection, loss, grief, gender and family. I know, right? A movie about a homicidal maniac who has sex with a Cadillac and pretends to a macho firefighter’s long lost son. It’s not for everyone, but if you can let the demented ambition wash over you it’s worth the effort.
Titane (literally “titanium”) is French writer and director Julia Ducournau second film, the follow-up to the equally audacious Raw in 2016. In that film, a vegetarian veterinary student develops a taste for human flesh during the hazing rituals new students are subjected to at school. To call the film a story about appetites is… concise. It’s also a coming-of-age story about a young woman working through her complex relationship with her older sister and discovering her sexuality. Think of a more Gallic Ginger Snaps and you’re kind of getting there.
So if Raw was confident, then Titane is off the charts. It’s easy to point out all the signposts Ducournau followed, intentionally or otherwise this time around: Claire Denis (Trouble Every Day), Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl), and Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi (Baise-Moi) are represented, as are (duh) Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) and body horror maestro David Cronenberg (Videodrome, Crash). But, and again a “but,” Ducournau is playing in a completely original sandbox. There’s nothing derivative about Titane, and a whole lot that’s new as well as totally whack.
Burn, baby, burn. And you thought your kids were trouble
In a brave, crazy, entirely engrossing debut feature performance, journalist Agathe Rousselle plays Alexia (the name of the sister in Raw), a motor show model and dancer (you know the ones, the women hired to look seductive while leaning against Toyotas) who has a titanium plate in her head, the result of being in a car wreck as a child. She’s now automotively obsessed and somewhat conflicted in her sexuality. Not in the sense of gay, straight, bi or other, just in how to respond to desire among other things. One night on her way home after her show, she rebuffs the unwelcome advances of a fanboy in the most extreme way. Shaken, she goes back inside and find comfort in the Caddy. Then Alexia and the car head to bone town. Because of course.
Another day, another failed romantic encounter, another homicide and Alexia winds up wanted by the Paris police, so she does the only thing she can to hide: Tapes down her boobs, cuts her hair, and goes to the cops herself claiming to be the missing son, Adrien, of firefighter Vincent (Vincent Lindon, The Measure of a Man). As one does. He rejoices in the return of his “son,” missing for a decade, and takes Alexia/Adrien under wing. The ludicrous turns keep coming, all bathed in garish light and colour by cinematographer Ruben Impens and production designer Laurie Colson, and set to an occasionally pounding — and disconcerting — score by Jim Williams.
This is the look of a man as wounded as he is macho as he DGAF
To complain about Titane’s fundamental ludicrousness misses the point. Everything about it is dialled up to 11, making Ducournau’s observations about femininity, gender, family, power and emotional intimacy stand out like neon bas reliefs. The car show Alexia works is comically heightened; it’s not just a car show it’s The Most Masculine Car Show Ever. When Alexia shuts down her creeper she does it in a way that every woman in the world has fantasised about at least once. The allegories are deep. But the sex and violence (oh, and it is violent) belies the fact that underneath it all Titane is an unapologetic, very simple story about two supremely fucked up people who come together because they need each other. It’s actually very sweet, and insists we can transcend gender norms; that we must. Ducournau is even more in command of her work than she was in her first film, and just might be trumping some of the old masters. There’s tearing in all the wrong places, motor oil in the wrong places, disturbing sounds. It’s wonderful and it makes her next feature a must-see.
But it’s still batshit.
Seriously, watch out for that hair pin