Titane (2021)

Julia Ducournau’s follow up to her superb 2016 debut Raw, Titane took home the Palme d’Or at Cannes a couple of years back. Whilst not perhaps quite up to the astonishing high bar of Raw, Titane is without a doubt no less imaginative. The film opens with a nasty car crash; a result of which sees central character Alexia have a titanium plate fitted in her head. After leaving the hospital, she shuns her parents and embraces their car. We then fast forward to Alexia as a grown woman, working as a sexed up showgirl at a motor show. At the culmination of the show, a man forces himself on Alexia, and she brutally murders him. We soon learn that this isn’t the first murder she’s committed, nor will it be the last. More pressingly however, is that she follows this particular murder by climbing into the car she was modeling by, and having sex with it. Not long after, she realises she’s pregnant, and is secreting motor oil from her vagina. With me so far? After committing another murder, Alexia is on the run from the authorities. She breaks her own nose, cuts her hair short, and hides her belly which is starting to show, eventually handing herself into the police claiming to be a missing boy, Adrien.

The film then changes tone and becomes something else entirely; Adrien’s father Vincent takes her in under the impression that she is his lost and damaged son, and the relationship between the two of them is what the film then focuses on. Although always conflicted about whether Alexia is actually his son, Vincent chooses to accept her for who she is. It’s an excellent message; Vincent doesn’t care who Alexia is, he accepts her with all her flaws, but he also doesn’t deny reality, he knows deep down something is not quite right. Ducournau’s talent is in abundance throughout Titane; it’s as dank and dark as the motor oil that leaks from Alexia throughout the film, with shades of J.G Ballard’s Crash thrown in for good measure. It also reminded me of Leos Carax’s masterpiece Holy Motors (2012) in the way it drags you into a story that isn’t possible in reality, but you don’t question it for a second while you’re in its embrace. 8.0/10