Review of Julia Ducournau’s Titane
Review by Moira Sullivan
Developmentally Edited by Alexandra Hidalgo
Copy Edited and Posted by Iliana Cosme-Brooks
Titane (2021). 1hr 48min. Directed and written by Julia Ducournau. Starring Agathe Rousselle and Garance Marillier.
Julia Ducournau has created a powerful iconic film in Titane, the Palme d’Or winner of the 74th Cannes Film Festival, where the human body is taken for a ride. Is it a female body? Is it a monster? Or is it a cyborg? Ducournau’s feature stands out among others selected for this year’s feature film competition because of its cinematic gestalt of a cyborgian split in gender expression—a female body that has become impregnated by a car.
For the first time in Cannes’ history, four out of the seven jurors evaluating feature films were women. Each day of the festival, film trade magazines publish grids of the films in competition rated by critics. Nearly all of the critics featured in the grids are men. These grids are widely read by the accredited press but do not always reflect who will win the awards. The 50/50 jury chose Julia Ducournau’s Titane for the Palme d’Or, the second woman to receive the award in Cannes’ history.
Titane begins with a car crash. A narcissistic uncaring father (Bertrand Bonello) screams at his seven-year-old daughter Alexia (Adèle Guigue) in the back seat to be quiet. Seconds later the car hits a barricade which sends her, not him, to the emergency room. As she sits up in bed, her head is covered with a vise to help her neck support the weight. She receives an implant made of biocompatible, fire-resistant titanium (titane in French) which is sutured into her head wound. When she leaves the hospital after rehabilitation, there are closeups of a scar that looks like brain tissue. It is a blaring remnant and hair can’t cover it.
Years after the car crash, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) has become a female erotic dancer, acting out sexual fantasies by performing on top of shiny, powerful cars with lots of horsepower. The spectators desire the performers and wait outside after the show is over, but Alexia turns off her act when she is done with her performance. One admirer follows her, asking for an autograph, then a kiss. In response, she pummels him in the head with a kanzashi—a Japanese hair pin used by Samurai. Leaning through the window of her car, his mouth exudes a white foam that splatters on her as he takes his last breaths. Later that night, she hears a loud pounding at her door. Alexia opens it and is led by an unknown force to a garage where an exhibition car with a running engine is waiting for her. The car entraps her with seatbelts and sexually assaults her. Astonishingly, she becomes impregnated by the car and is alarmed by the black engine fluid exuding from her body.
Alexia embarks on a journey of compulsive and instinctive survival after the attack. Justine (Garance Marillier) and Alexia meet in a sexual encounter of mutual consent that goes wrong and Alexia attacks her and her housemates with her kanzashi. Afterwards, the police broadcast a drawing of her face on the news and on public monitors. Alexia decides to hide by changing her gender identity. She shaves her head and binds her chest at a service station restroom. She becomes “Adrien” and turns herself into the police. The police conclude that “Adrien” matches the image of the missing son of a fire marshal, Vincent. The latter is ecstatic to be reunited and accepts him unconditionally. Like Alexia, Vincent transforms his body. In his case, he uses steroids to enhance his physical prowess. This relationship is thematically potent as Alexia’s body is part fire-resistant titanium and Vincent is a firefighter.
Julia Ducournau’s cinematic style is accomplished. She is skilled at representing gender through her cadence of shot, sound, and montage. There is a refreshing lack of dialogue in Ducournau’s screenplay. She knows how to visualize female characters—not through surface reality, window dressing, or mirrors of the camera’s male gaze—but by showing how women feel internally. This depth is often accomplished through the ways in which the characters gaze at each other. The scenes are visceral and cathartic.
In her films, Ducournau shows physical metamorphoses and transformations of female characters through ingestion, digestion, and sexual experience. In Junior, which was awarded the 2011 Petit Rail d’Or (Cannes Small Golden Rail Award) at Cannes, she presents a teen (Garance Marillier) bullied as she goes through adolescence who discovers she has an extraordinary power, and in Raw, which won the 2016 Cannes FIPRESCI Award, she tells the story of a young vet school student (again Marillier) forced to ingest animal meat who later becomes a cannibal. Miller, a Ducournau staple, plays Justine in Titane. Ducournau’s proclamation that cannibalism is human defies labeling her work as simply horror. Likewise, Titane is not “monstrous” horror, but it is instead about what separates humans from machines.
In Titane and Raw, Ducournau explores rituals surrounding contests that display prowess. In Raw, initiation rites are required for the induction of new students into vet school, such as the ingestion of animal parts followed by a stiff drink. For the firemen in Titane, extinguishing fires is followed by a tribal dance of jubilance. Ducournau shoots images of smoke and flames strikingly at dusk. The choreography of male bodies shot in slow motion to loud pulsating music is an important element of the overall kinetics of Titane. Vincent dances to The Zombie hit “She’s Not There.” “Adrien’s” slight, thin body, demeanor, and gait are tauntingly perceived by the fire crew as “gay,” and they entice her to perform for their pleasure in the tribal dances. As she dances, “Adrien” transforms into “Alexia” from the exhibition halls in a masquerade. While watching this performance, their faces reveal discomfort.
This is a film that shows, not tells. Ducournau “shows” how women feel. She shows their bodies in intimate detail and their emotions in facial expressions and corporeal reactions. They are above all “doers.” She shows their empowerment, vulnerability, and strengths, even as they are assaulted and bullied. The power of the film is how the body of Alexia calls into question binary gender worlds—a body which is both human and machine.
Watch the trailer for Titane here. Connect with Moira by visiting her profile.