Julia Ducournau’s hypnotic Cannes-winning film is an unsettling and overwhelming experience, demonstrating how the director brings the most disturbing elements of genre cinema into her field
You might think that a film that wins the Palme d’Or at Cannes has to be approached from solemnity and reverence. We would be wrong if we saw ‘Titane’ this way. Ducournau’s debut feature, ‘Crudo’, told the story of a young vegan who discovered herself a voracious cannibal. The Parisian director was revealed as an advantageous pupil of the first Cronenberg, capable of bringing the most disturbing elements of genre cinema to her field and shaping a personal poetics.
‘Titane’ provokes nervous laughter and makes us sometimes look away from the screen. Its protagonist fornicates with a car and becomes pregnant, shedding belly fat as if she were pregnant with a new man-machine. There is also a firefighter who resists aging by injecting steroids into his muscular body and who ends up adopting this serial killer because he sees in her the son who fled from his side. ‘Titane’ contains hypnotic images, black humor, gore scenes and a discourse on gender, sexuality, motherhood and fatherhood that shows that Ducournau is a woman of her time without fear of anything. The dedication of the leading couple, formed by Agathe Rouselle and an impressive Vincent Lindon, make ‘Titane’ an unsettling, overwhelming and joyous experience. One of the movies of the year.
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