In 2021, three years before the Cannes Film Festival was thoroughly shaken up by Coralie Fargeat's The Substance last year, it had already been taken by surprise by another body horror made by another French director, Julia Ducournau. Her unexpected second feature, Titane, which earned the coveted Palme d'Or, is also an uncompromisingly graphic film that balances horror, thriller, and psychological drama. On the menu, Ducournau is serving: an exquisite scene depicting sex with a car, a resulting pregnancy involving motor oil leaks, lots of maiming, and compulsive murders — all filmed in a deliberately vivid and exuberant, yet stunning way. Much like Fargeat in both her features, Ducournau never shies away from disturbing imagery but never employs violence just for the sake of it or shock value. And as Titane drives along, gradually doing away with boundaries, and preconceptions about gender and bodily wholeness, it actually manages to become a truly emotional journey.
The Body Horror Begins with a Family Trauma
Image via NEON
Image via NEON 
Image via NEON 
Image via NEON 
Image via NEON
Titane's protagonist Alexia (played by courageous and amazing Agathe Rousselle, who made her debut in the film) is a dancer, who lives with a titanium plate in her head after a childhood accident caused by her father's indifference. Her familial relations haven't gotten better through the years, and the grownup Alexia is obsessed with starting fires and sexual encounters with metal objects. After disposing of her parents and brutally murdering a potential partner with her hairpin, after almost biting off their nipple piercing, she needs a place to hide. So Alexia successfully poses as the missing son of a random fire captain named Vincent (Vincent Lindon), who accepts her despite everyone else's opinions and has his own complicated relationship with his body. With a synopsis like this, it's hard to imagine Titane can have any precedents in the whole history of cinema — but it does.
First, it is a spiritual and esthetical followup to Ducournau's impressively gory first film, Raw — a commentary on the awakening of female sexuality that was so graphic, its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival famously featured paramedics called in for several audience members after they fainted. And then, of course, there is the king of the body horror subgenre, David Cronenberg, who also serves as an inspiration: namely, his movie Crash, which had its characters attracted to having sex in car collision settings, and Videodrome, where the protagonist was becoming one with a TV screen. Alexia would definitely fit right in with these people. And well, the parallels between Docournau's second film and Fargeat's The Substance also go beyond both of them being Palme d'Or winners.
Bodies and Minds Fight Each Other in a Brutal Way in 'Titane'
Despite the fact that The Substance is mostly perceived as a satirical critique of the Hollywood industry and its impossible beauty standards in regard to women, Fargeat's film also deals a lot with the concept of self-identity and self-perception, the duality of physical and spiritual. In Titane, the character of Vincent seems to be on a similar path as Demi Moore's Elizabeth - ironically, for reasons that aren't even that very different from hers. As Vincent is feeling the brunt of the years, he starts injecting his body with steroids to keep his best shape, only to realize that the same body betrays him once again by becoming immune to it. Much like Elizabeth is forced to rely on her looks, Vincent has to rely on his strength (this preconception is also rooted in him by his environment). His vivacity is still there in his mind, and he is prepared to fight the greatest antagonist of all time — physical reality.
Alexia's trajectory is even more nuanced. She stands against the whole world, but the heartbreaking thing is that the world has let her down first. In a film filled with various acts of violence, the most brutal one comes in the very first scene, a flashback showing Alexia as a young child seeking her father's attention and him rejecting her. It's notable that in that first scene, the touch Alexia craves so much comes not from affection, but anger - causing not only the car crash but the chain reaction of Alexia's future actions and choices. Chasing the glimpses of connection, grownup Alexia bends her body and challenges her sexuality, while always bearing the feeling of rejection and the impossibility of acceptance inside. Her extraordinary pregnancy is just a manifestation of what has been torturing her for years.
Despite a variety of graphic imagery, ranging from relatively tame bits like Alexia breaking her nose with a sink to literal outbursts of pain and agony, like the labor scene near the end, at its core, Titane is a film about desperately seeking human connection in the world of metal. In this sense, Ducournau's film actually has one other interesting predecessor - Zoé Wittock's Jumbo, which came out in 2020 and tells the story of a shy young woman who falls in love and has a full-blown romance with an amusement park ride. While Jumbo is melancholic, Titane, of course, is fierce and gruesome, and the affection that finally prevails in it isn't romantic. The film's finale, which is both grotesque and beautiful, turns out to be a unique sort of happy ending, where unconditional love triumphs over all — lies, delusions, and physical reality included. A truly refreshing ending when it comes to most body horror outings, but also a logical one: after all, it's bodies, genders, and sexual desires that are fluid, but love, apparently, can be solid as titan.
- Release Date
- October 1, 2021
- Runtime
- 108 minutes
- Director
- Julia Ducournau
- Writers
- Julia Ducournau
Cast
-
Garance Marillier -
Agathe Rousselle
