Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
If you want a heavy dose of body horror, look no further than Titane, now on VOD. Julia Ducournau’s lady-has-sex-with-a-car-and-you-won’t-guess-what-happens-next thriller won the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, an accolade that will shock only those who don’t realize that bleakmeisters general Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke have taken home the award. Surprisingly, David Cronenberg isn’t on that list, considering he once made a movie about people who got their jollies by watching gruesome car crashes — and therefore, Ducournau emerges as his spiritual successor. At this point, you’re either strapping in to watch Titane, or firing up a Hallmark Channel Christmas rom-com, because there are no other types of people on this planet.
TITANE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Young Alexia’s father is trying to drive. She kicks his seat, makes irritating noises, unbuckles her belt and clambers around. He turns around to strap her back in and crashes the car. We get detailed closeups of doctors screwing a metal plate into her skull and stapling the skin back together. When she gets out of the hospital, she walks up to the family car and gives it a big kiss. Now Alexia is an adult (Agathe Rouselle). She wears her hair up to show off the scar, which resembles a curling strand of barbed wire. On the back of her jacket, a lion. She struts into a place best described as an auto-fetish showroom — “auto” as in “cars” and “fetish” as in “everything in this movie.”
Music thumps as Alexia sprawls atop a vintage Cadillac with a hot-flames paint job. She twerks and touches herself, dancing as if possessed, as if there’s no other moment where Alexia is more fully herself. Afterward, she signs autographs and poses for selfies with fans, then showers with some of the other dancers. One of them is Justine (Garance Marillier), who flirts lightly, and then it gets heavier when Alexia reaches down for the soap and snags her hair in Justine’s nipple ring and has to tug and pull and yank to get it out. Alexia leaves the venue and one fan chases her to her car. All he wants is an autograph. And a kiss. She obliges, pulls a knitting-needle hairpin from her updo and slams the pointy end into his ear. He foams at the mouth and flails and twitches and dies, and here’s Alexia, acting like she’s done this before.
She goes back in to rinse off the spittle and as she showers she hears a thumping from the showroom. It’s the Cadillac. Don’t ask questions, it won’t help. Nude and dripping wet, she climbs in and I’m not sure of the mechanics of what happens here, but it’s rough and loud and disturbing, and we notice the “Love is a dog from hell” tattoo between her breasts. Gotta appreciate a good Bukowski shout-out. It continues, this plot, about this woman and her, well, let’s just call them issues. The story involves: Some other missing and presumably dead people. Alexia altering her appearance in ways that might make you squirm, shudder or convulse. The most terrifying pregnancy since John Hurt’s in Alien. A grieving father, Vincent (Vincent Lindon), who’s probably not convinced that Alexia is indeed his son who’s been missing for 10 years, but surely wants to force himself to believe it anyway; he’s also a firefighter and steroid junkie who jams needles into his buttocks and strains so hard flexing in the mirror, it makes that roided-out kangaroo meme look like Lil Bub pawing at a feather. If you need to take a moment right now, I fully understand.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Crash, Drive, Possessor, Zulawski’s Possession, Under the Skin, Santa Sangre, mother!, Willem Dafoe’s teeth in Wild at Heart.
Performance Worth Watching: Rouselle’s commitment to the bit skirts the hem of Isabell Adjani in Possession, a comparison I will never, ever make lightly. Rouselle’s fearless.
Memorable Dialogue: When a creep gropes one of the dancers, a bouncer admonishes him: “Touch with your eyes,” he says, and that’s something we’re happy we can’t do while watching this movie.
Sex and Skin: Plenty of the type that might make you hit pause to call your therapist.
Our Take: The first act of Titane is one of the most ferocious stretches of film you’re likely to see, if you don’t bolt in the middle of the skull-surgery sequence. It’s impossible to maintain such intensity for a feature film, and Ducournau doesn’t try, instead electing to shift gears and explore provocations that are a little more cerebral, and a little less physical. She stirs ideas about parenthood, gender identity and sex into this dense soup whose primary ingredient is a protagonist defined by her taboos, a grotesque, self-mutilating murderer with a pain fetish and a habit of leaking motor oil from her- well, never mind.
The film challenges us to practice cognitive dissonance: The premise is patently absurd, but the details are rendered with such realism, our response is visceral and immediate. We’re too busy clenching or laughing — yes, laughing, either earnestly or out of self-preservation — to think. Ducournau uses sound and visual texture to inspire physical sensations; even the sound of buzzing hair clippers transcends its innocuousness to inspire crawling gooseflesh. Ducournau upends expectations with surreal, otherworldly sequences in which Alexia tags along with Vincent and the firefighters as they fight blazes, scenes that meander into more contemplative territory, which shed some light on these people, so often seen during their darkest moments. The film reaches a conclusion that’s purposely dissatisfying and anticlimactic, a relatively tame moment of horror and beauty that answers some questions but stubbornly offers little clarity. The physicality of the film is rendered with the lucidity of a master like Cronenberg; the psychology of the film is a task not for the weak.
Our Call: Don’t mind me, I’m going to take the week to recover from this. So of course you should STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
