Strange are the days when a man marries a hologram, or when the first interaction many people have in the morning is with a virtual assistant with a name terribly similar to the protagonist of Titane, Julia Ducournau' second movie after the critically acclaimed Raw, to which it amply refers, from the opening scene to the Garance Marillier's character to the warped father-daughter relationship.
In these strange days, maybe it is not very less strange that a film like Titane unexpectedly and controversially wins the Palm d'Or at Cannes, the first movie since The Piano to bring the top prize to a female director.
With a titanium plate implanted in her skull after a car accident as a young girl, Alexia develops a very particular attraction to cars, that she fosters by becoming a dancer at supercharged muscle car motor shows and a magnet for their toxic machismo. After one last show, Alexia brutally kills one of her excessively intrusive admirers, before entering the car she was provocatively dancing on and having an intercourse with it. Soon after, she discovers her pregnancy and goes on a gruesome killing spree involving one of her colleagues and her party in addition to burning her parents' house after locking them in.
Now wanted by the police, Alexia changes her appearance and pose as Adrien, vanished ten years earlier as a boy. Vincent, the firefighters commander and father of the boy, distraught by his ageing, which he tries to combat with steroids, and unable to accept his son disappearance, takes Alexia in, forcing everybody to accept her as his lost son. Once again in the macho environment of extreme firefighting, Alexia struggles to keep her cover and develops a closer bond with Vincent, who badly needs it to hang on to his illusion. With her pregnancy and female nature more and more difficult to hide, Alexia leans more on Vincent, who lovingly supports her till the controversial delivery that ends the movie.
With poignant performances from Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon, Titane is not an easy movie to watch, deliberately punching the viewer in the stomach in order to speak to the mind, but is it a film worth watching in days like these, at least by those who believe art is not only the perfect balance of Botticelli's Birth of Venus or the mesmerising stillness of Leonardo's Mona Lisa but also the shattered world of Picasso's Guernica or the unbearable pain of Munch's The Scream.
Titane is the second full-feature movie of Julia Ducournau, after Raw (2016) and Junior, her debut short film at Cannes in 2011. The daughter of a gynaecologist and dermatologist, she admits that her family played a major role in her fascination with flesh and bodies, which she uses, often brutally, to represent the turbulences of lost souls. Compared to directors like David Cronenberg or David Lynch, Julia Ducournau has shown a peculiar personal style in the stories she narrates and the way she films then and is definitely a director to follow with attention.
In these strange days, maybe it is not very less strange that a film like Titane unexpectedly and controversially wins the Palm d'Or at Cannes, the first movie since The Piano to bring the top prize to a female director.
With a titanium plate implanted in her skull after a car accident as a young girl, Alexia develops a very particular attraction to cars, that she fosters by becoming a dancer at supercharged muscle car motor shows and a magnet for their toxic machismo. After one last show, Alexia brutally kills one of her excessively intrusive admirers, before entering the car she was provocatively dancing on and having an intercourse with it. Soon after, she discovers her pregnancy and goes on a gruesome killing spree involving one of her colleagues and her party in addition to burning her parents' house after locking them in.
Now wanted by the police, Alexia changes her appearance and pose as Adrien, vanished ten years earlier as a boy. Vincent, the firefighters commander and father of the boy, distraught by his ageing, which he tries to combat with steroids, and unable to accept his son disappearance, takes Alexia in, forcing everybody to accept her as his lost son. Once again in the macho environment of extreme firefighting, Alexia struggles to keep her cover and develops a closer bond with Vincent, who badly needs it to hang on to his illusion. With her pregnancy and female nature more and more difficult to hide, Alexia leans more on Vincent, who lovingly supports her till the controversial delivery that ends the movie.
With poignant performances from Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon, Titane is not an easy movie to watch, deliberately punching the viewer in the stomach in order to speak to the mind, but is it a film worth watching in days like these, at least by those who believe art is not only the perfect balance of Botticelli's Birth of Venus or the mesmerising stillness of Leonardo's Mona Lisa but also the shattered world of Picasso's Guernica or the unbearable pain of Munch's The Scream.
Titane is the second full-feature movie of Julia Ducournau, after Raw (2016) and Junior, her debut short film at Cannes in 2011. The daughter of a gynaecologist and dermatologist, she admits that her family played a major role in her fascination with flesh and bodies, which she uses, often brutally, to represent the turbulences of lost souls. Compared to directors like David Cronenberg or David Lynch, Julia Ducournau has shown a peculiar personal style in the stories she narrates and the way she films then and is definitely a director to follow with attention.