Titane – first-look review

Pri­or to the Cannes pre­mière of Julia Ducournau’s sec­ond fea­ture film Titane, only a few details were made pub­lic. One was an intrigu­ing log line that’s been kick­ing around for a while now: ​“Fol­low­ing a series of unex­plained crimes, a father is reunit­ed with the son who has been miss­ing for 10 years.” The oth­er was more eso­teric, a sim­ple def­i­n­i­tion of the ele­ment tita­ni­um: ​“A met­al high­ly resis­tant to heat and cor­ro­sion, with high ten­sile strength alloys.” 

When the teas­er trail­er dropped a week before the fes­ti­val, spec­u­la­tion was rife, with many draw­ing com­par­isons with the work of body hor­ror mae­stro David Cro­nen­berg. Hav­ing now seen the film, one has to won­der whether Video­drome and Crash were for­ma­tive view­ing expe­ri­ences for Ducournau. 

The sto­ry cen­tres on Alex­ia (new­com­er Agathe Rous­selle) who sus­tained injuries in a car acci­dent as a child which left her with strange predilec­tions. As a young adult she makes mon­ey as a mod­el and dancer at car shows, but her true pas­sions are decid­ed­ly more unusu­al. They soon land her in a sticky sit­u­a­tion which in turn leads her to the doorstep of griev­ing father Vin­cent (Vin­cent Lin­don), whose young son went miss­ing 10 years ago.

The more tit­il­lat­ing ele­ments of Titane will like­ly be con­densed into Let­ter­boxd and Twit­ter fod­der before the film receives a wider release (it opened the day after its pre­mière in France). There is cer­tain­ly no short­age of strik­ing images liable to make audi­ences wrig­gle in their seats: the glint of grease, gore and gaso­line per­me­ates every­thing, cre­at­ing an allur­ing visu­al night­mare you can’t pull away from.

To wit, Rous­selle is as per­fect­ly cast as Garance Mar­il­li­er was in Ducournau’s first film, Raw (she also makes an appear­ance in Titane). Her char­ac­ter is large­ly mute which makes intense phys­i­cal­i­ty essen­tial; Rous­selle deliv­ers some of the finest ocu­lar act­ing in screen his­to­ry, while oppo­site her Lin­don is ten­der, unnerv­ing and bru­tal in the same breath. There is an easy uneasi­ness between them, with an under­ly­ing threat ever-present in their relationship. 

If Raw man­i­fest­ed female desire as a very real gnaw­ing hunger, Titane is sim­i­lar­ly auda­cious in how it tack­les gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty and mas­culin­i­ty. Ducournau’s abil­i­ty to find humour in the most hor­ri­fy­ing sce­nar­ios is even more evi­dent here; the grotesque and the absurd go hand in hand in her super­nat­ur­al vision, while her com­mand of colour and sound bor­ders on seduc­tive. Jim Williams – who com­posed the excel­lent score for Raw – returns on music duties with a choral-heavy sym­pho­ny rem­i­nis­cent of Han­del, lend­ing God­li­ness to scenes of depravity. 

Where Raw took view­ers on a clear­er nar­ra­tive jour­ney, Titane is a slight­ly more freeform affair – a chro­mat­ic puz­zle which leaves plen­ty of blanks to fill in. Ducour­nau con­tin­ues to build on her impres­sive body of work, push­ing the bound­aries of taste and decen­cy to present con­fronting cin­e­ma which leaves a sharp metal­lic taste on the tongue.

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