Titane: Literal Auto-Erotic Madness Actually Has Things to Say Beneath the Shock
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B-plus
An audacious and demented film, tailor-made for its recent Midnight Madness slot at the Toronto International Film Festival, Julia Ducournau’s Titane also has intimations of profundity - quite a claim for a film about a woman who is impregnated by a car.
Fluid sexuality, toxic masculinity, the male gaze, the desire to “belong,” these are presumably the kind of themes and subtext that won this movie the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
But the WTF? Factor is front and center in the imaginatively Cronenberg-esque Titane, at least until its twistily sentimental last act, a section that is such a radical departure from what preceded it, it changes the movie’s entire mood.
When we meet the child Alexia, she is obnoxious and obstreperous in the backseat of her father’s (Bertrand Bonello) car, literally driving him to distraction. An accident and near death later, Alexia has a plate in her head, and a sudden fondling attraction for the vehicle that nearly killed her.
Flash ahead some years, and an angry and mercurial adult Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) is a car model who is famous for her erotic poses at auto shows. Her hair is shaved to defiantly highlight the scar from her plate. And her job combines what she loves best (lusty contact with cars) with the drawback of being ogled by creeps for a living.
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One day, the latter goes too far, a fan becomes a stalker, and Alexia becomes a killer. This is not in any desperate way, but rather in an unstoppably compulsive way, as if a switch has been turned on and a cold-blooded rampage follows (accompanied by the aforementioned auto-impregnation, which is one of the only events in the movie largely left to the imagination).
Alexia in serial killer mode is not exactly inconspicuous, and even in her agitated state, she looks at her face on news reports and knows the police are not far behind (that they’re behind at all is bizarre).
Titane takes its biggest leap here, as Alexia sees a computer-generated adult depiction of a long-missing boy and decides she can pull off a ruse, taping her breasts and adopting a “look.”
The target is an ultra-alpha fire station captain named Vincent (Vincent Lindon), who is injecting himself, presumably with growth hormone or steroids and exercising manically, all to counter the open emotional wound he carries over his lost son and the marriage that dissolved in the wake of his disappearance.
Alexia’s disguise is not that great. Most of the macho men in the fire-station know something is “off,” but Titane takes the believable position that the desire for something to be true can be far stronger than obvious reality. Vincent’s world with his “son” is self-created, even as the birth of car-baby approaches in its oily way.
Titane juggles a surfeit of themes, to the point where it’s difficult to say what it’s about. Although I suppose it’s ultimately about rationalization and acceptance – of even the most mad and sensational things.
Titane. Directed and co-writted by Julia Ducournau. Starring Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon. Opens in theatres Friday, October 1.