Titane (2021)

Ducournau made a splash with her debut Raw and follows it up with the equally audacious Titane, a film whose "gimmick" of a woman having sex with a car remains a small aspect of the film which ends up being about something very different. Even beyond the salacious premise, Titane is a bold, colourful film that presents uncomfortable ideas within its gripping story. 

Titane is more the story of a psychopath, a serial killer, who finds a space for herself with a grieving man who she adopts as a father figure as she self-destructs. The film shows us who she is at the beginning, even as a child, putting others at risk and purposefully bothering or harming others. Then as an adult the film takes an interesting and fairly challenging take on her. We see her become the victim of a sexual assault and to violently defend herself. This is a trope we've seen many times. But what Titane does surprisingly here is to reveal that she choses to violently attack many others, even those who have not "wronged" her. She is a serial killer who appears to enjoy the violence that she inflicts, even when it might be well deserved. 

The film does revel in its violence, like many male driven films of this genre. But what it does which is so interesting is how she blurs this line of how we see our heroine/villain. We can sympathize but also are horrified by her actions. And thrown in is the bit of a sense of humour about it. Everything about it is uncomfortable in how the film asks us to engage with what we are seeing. 

Yes there is a scene where she has sex with a car, it is brief and perhaps a bit fantastic. It is left to interpretation if it actually happened.  But then the film shifts as she encounters a man whose son was abducted. She has created a new identity, a male one, and the films explores some interesting things about gender here too, and the man accepts her as his missing son grown up, even though he likely suspects she is not. And here is where the film becomes the most fascinating. Watching these two very broken people find connection by abandoning reality, even this very disturbing connection presented here is revelatory. I wish the film had focused more on that as often the body-horror genre stuff pulls me out of where the film was the strongest. The sci fi car pregnancy (yes her car sex makes her pregnant) felt besides the point and weakened some of the meaningfulness for me. 

Still the film is powerfully watchable, even when you want to look away. Ducournau washes her film with incredible colour which emboldens the emotions present in each scene. Her narrative pace is quick meaning Titane never drags. She packs a lot into her little story so even when it is going off the rails a bit it remains gripping. I just wish she didn't let herself get distracted with the heavy metal aspects which distract what what I felt to be the most compelling parts of the story. 

Titane

Starring: Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon

Writer/Director: Julia Ducournau