Reviewed by Hannah Spencer.
Director: Julia Ducournau, 2021, Kismet, 108 minutes.
This is the movie that caused 13 people to faint at the Sydney Film Festival.
Whilst that seems to be a bit of an overreaction, there is a fair amount of body horror in this visceral, frenzied, radical-fantasy film.
Winning the coveted Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for this film, Director Julia Ducournau (Raw) became the second ever woman to receive the award in its 75 year history (the first was Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993).
Newcomer Agathe Rousselle plays Alexia, an androgynous young woman who works as a dancer at muscle car shows.
She is a solitary but disturbingly mesmerizing figure.
Late one night after a car show, Alexia murders an aggressive fanboy using only a hair pin.
After washing his blood and brains from her body, she has a rapturous, fevered, sexual encounter with a flame painted Cadillac.
This union results in a pregnancy that slowly begins to morph her body and cause petrol coloured liquid to leak from her breasts.
Alexia continues her murderous rampage with horrific but sometimes darkly funny results until she needs to go on the run from the police.
Without hesitation, she binds her breasts and pregnant belly, breaks her nose and assumes the identity of Adrien, a child who has been missing for a decade.
There is an abrupt gear change to the movie as Alexia moves in with Vincent, the father of the missing child (played by Vincent Lindon, The Measure Of A Man).
Gender norms are thrown out the window as Alexia assumes a male identity, bodily changes are explored with ripping, tearing intensity as the car/baby(?) grows within her.
Vincent, a muscle-bound fire chief, is so bereft with grief and desperate for his son that he refuses a DNA test and overlooks the physical changes in an increasingly pregnant Alexia.
What follows is an unexpectedly touching examination of loneliness and intimacy, in stark contrast to the first half of the film.
Titane obliterates all genre conventions and refuses to adhere to a coherent plot.
Trying to make sense of if it is an exercise in futility.
Instead, it revels in heady cinematography and eschews dialogue for physical acting, creating a visceral, disturbingly intense film that is experienced bodily rather than logically.
It’s an incredibly original and confident film, although the borderline unintelligible plot can be frustrating.
In order to enjoy it, you must sit back, buckle your seatbelt and submit to the wild ride.
3 out of 5
Limited release in cinemas.
