Titane (2021).

“Vroom, vroom.”

Directed by Julia Ducournau

Written by Julia Ducournau

Starring Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier, and a sexually active fire truck

The Stage.

A young girl is involved in a car accident and a metal plate is inserted into the side of her head. As an adult, she becomes a serial killer who has sex with cars, and that’s only scratching the surface of this bizarre tale of what it means to be family.

The Review.

Titane is an experience. It’s a weird, surreal, challenging film that can be taken so many different ways. Agathe Rousselle plays Alexia, a woman who seemingly hates her father and becomes a vicious serial killer. Her performance as this flawed character is daring yet subdued, as she plays one character who begins to morph into someone else completely. Vincent Lindon plays Vincent, a firefighter who’s also got a flawed past that he cannot move on from, compounded with deep-seated masculinity issues. Fate brings the two together and it’s so interesting to see how everything plays out, even if some of it makes little sense. I cannot say much more without resorting to huge spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that. Both actors were fantastic, even if I didn’t love the character of Alexia. More on that later.

I’ve seen a lot of people online saying that Titane is an exploration of gender fluidity, but it feels like more than that. I think it’s more about finding acceptance and love in others that need that missing puzzle piece, and in this case, it’s familial love. Vincent’s missing puzzle piece is a child, Alexia’s, a father figure. He’s the first person we meet in the film that she doesn’t immediately murder, and even though he doesn’t know exactly who she is, he doesn’t care. A pregnancy in the film can be seen as a stand-in for emotional baggage or rape. Or we can just toss all of the symbolism out of the window and take her being impregnated by a fucking low-rider at face value.

The film is beautifully shot with an atmosphere of pure dread, which is strange because this isn’t really a horror movie as much as it is a familial drama with a light dusting of Cronenberg-esque body horror. I actually thought that the body horror aspect was pretty tame and felt overblown in the marketing campaign, with blurbs from places like Yahoo proclaiming, “Titane is the bonkers body horror movie that's coming for all the Oscars…” It’s not as gross as it could have been, especially towards the end. Scenes like the opening car dance and the firefighting scenes were particularly striking.

As interesting as Titane’s tale is, it didn’t really work for me, and most of that lies in Alexia being the protagonist. She has absolutely no charm and her face is just a blank slate at all times. There was nothing making me want to root for her - she seemed like an annoying kid who turned into a despicable adult, and what we see of her parents on-screen wasn’t that bad. As a filmmaker, you don’t have to make your audience like an anti-hero, but you should give them a reason to root for them. I couldn’t stand her character, so I really felt nothing for her. Vincent was the most interesting character in the film and I liked his arc, even if I didn’t like his character after he went too far with one of his subordinates.

The End.

Titane is like a work of art that I just don’t connect to. It’s a piece that I can admire, but ultimately didn’t like. I think there’s going to be an audience for this film - people who like a good character study that looks gorgeous and want to walk out of the theater talking to people about what the fuck they just saw and what everything stood for.