{"id":9888,"date":"2024-12-10T23:38:04","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9888"},"modified":"2024-12-10T23:38:04","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T04:38:04","slug":"titane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/10\/titane\/","title":{"rendered":"Titane"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Titane<\/strong> (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neon\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence and disturbing material, graphic nudity, sexual content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Julia Ducournau\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Julia Ducournau\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jim Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ruben Impens\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 1, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Vincent Lindon, Agathe Rousselle, Garance Marillier, Lais Salameh, Mara Cisse, Marin Judas, Diong-Keba Tacu, Myriem Akheddiou, Bertrand Bonello, Adele Guigue.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $1.4M (US)\/$4.9M (World)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Spoken in French w\/English subtitles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0Raw, the debut feature of writer-director Julia Ducournau, is a hard act to follow. A coming-of-age story that uses cannibalism as a metaphor for a teenage girl\u2019s sexual awakening; there\u2019s never been anything like it before or since. Topping it would be a tall order for the most experienced of filmmakers. She nonetheless rises to the occasion with her sophomore effort Titane<\/strong>, an insane piece combining grotesque body horror and psychological terror with its story of an extremely disturbed young woman with a thing for cars. The winner of this year\u2019s Palme d\u2019Or prize at Cannes, it\u2019s a bold and wholly original film that will definitely have mainstream viewers running for the exits. It\u2019s not for everybody\u2019s tastes as you\u2019ll soon learn.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A childhood car wreck, one that she causes in the film\u2019s prologue, leaves Alexia (newcomer Rousselle) with a titanium plate in her skull and a huge scar on the side of her head that she displays like a badge of honor. It also leaves her sexually attracted to cars. As an adult, she makes a living as a dancer; specifically, the kind that performs at auto shows. She\u2019s a minor celebrity of sorts; her fans are mainly guys turned on by her writhing and slithering all over sleek, shiny muscle cars. Not exactly a people person, Alexia is indifferent to the adoration thrown her way. One night, she\u2019s approached in an empty parking lot by a horndog who wants more than her autograph. She responds to his unwanted advances by ramming her sharp chopstick hairpin right into the creeper\u2019s ear, killing him. It doesn\u2019t appear to faze her at all leading the viewer to believe she\u2019s done this sort of thing before.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Okay, so our protagonist is a cold-blooded serial killer. That\u2019s not the weird part of the twisted tale. In what can only be described as massively f***ed up, Alexia has sex with a car and becomes pregnant. Oh yeah, you read that right. I\u2019ll say it again. Alexia has sex with a car and becomes pregnant. It only makes her more mentally unstable. After committing a few more murders, she tries to run, but realizes she can\u2019t hide unless she does something drastic. She decides to assume the identity of a boy that went missing ten years earlier. She chops off her hair, tapes down her breasts and bulging stomach and breaks her nose before turning herself in to the police as the missing boy Adrien.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you think that\u2019s crazy, just wait until you hear what happens next. The boy\u2019s father Vincent (Lindon, The Measure of a Man) accepts this obvious poser as his long-absent son. To be fair, he has issues of his own. A fire chief, he injects steroids into his muscular body in an attempt to ward off the effects of aging. He wants to be as young as the men who work under him. It\u2019s true, DENIAL isn\u2019t just a river in Egypt. Anyway, this is when Titane <\/strong>shifts gears and changes direction. It goes from being a metaphor for female rage to exploring gender identity in a microcosm ruled by toxic masculinity. Alexia finds herself in a situation where the beauty she once used as a weapon can now bring about her downfall. She has to navigate the natural changes her body is experiencing as she suppresses them in order to maintain her fa\u00e7ade. On top of everything else, we\u2019re not talking about a normal pregnancy here. There\u2019s a new life growing inside Alexia; what it is isn\u2019t exactly clear.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As a lifelong movie lover, I\u2019m saddened to admit I\u2019ve become disenchanted with mainstream cinema. So many movies today are nothing more than fodder, empty vehicles that instantly fade from memory. They may be entertaining, but they\u2019re just product as opposed to art. They\u2019re more assembled than written. There are a few exceptions such as the recent Clint Eastwood film Cry Macho, a character-driven cowboy drama that\u2019s already ridden off into the sunset after two weeks. Titane<\/strong> is another exception. I call it horror even though it defies categorization. The French-language film is deeply disturbing and, at times, darkly funny. There\u2019s a scene where Alexia becomes irritated (instead of agitated) as a simple murder of a female lover becomes complicated by too many roommates. It\u2019s horrifying and humorous at the same time. It\u2019s also evidence of the cold, pitiless nature of Titane<\/strong>. There\u2019s a big hunk of metal where its heart should be.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In her feature film debut, Rousselle delivers a chilling performance as Alexia, a young woman completely bereft of feelings, especially when it comes to other people. She keeps her distance emotionally and physically. When her hair gets caught in a fellow dancer\u2019s nipple ring in the shower, one senses it\u2019s closest she\u2019s been to a person in a while. No two ways about it, this girl is SCARY! Her lack of emotion sends chills. Rousselle knocks it out the park. What\u2019s even cooler is how she uses her androgynous looks to her advantage when she assumes the role of Adrien. Lindon is also great as Vincent, a man so consumed by grief; he\u2019s willing to accept Alexia as his son even though everybody else can see through the lie. Their relationship evolves into something creepy and weird in a quasi-incestuous way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are a fair number of shocking images in Titane<\/strong> like the scene where Alexia tries to perform an abortion on herself with her hairpin. There\u2019s also a graphic sequence depicting her brain surgery as a child. That\u2019s in addition to the body horror involving her bizarre pregnancy. I would venture that Ducournau was largely inspired by David Cronenberg (Crash) for this particular outing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Titane<\/strong> is a very vivid film from the rich color scheme to the cold, sterile cinematography by Ruben Impens to the hard-driving soundtrack. Subtlety has nothing to do with it. It tells its story frankly with no punches pulled and lets you make what you will of it. Ducournau is a bold new voice in cinema, one that I hope we\u2019ll be hearing more of in the years to come. If her subsequent efforts are as great as her first two, we\u2019re in for a demented treat.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Titane (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Neon\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 108 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence and disturbing material, graphic nudity, sexual content, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Julia Ducournau\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Julia Ducournau\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jim Williams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ruben Impens\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 1, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Vincent Lindon, Agathe Rousselle, Garance Marillier, Lais Salameh, Mara Cisse, Marin Judas, Diong-Keba Tacu, Myriem Akheddiou, Bertrand Bonello, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Titane-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9888"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10209,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9888\/revisions\/10209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}