Julia Ducournau's second-year effort is not for the faint-hearted

This film review was first released after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on July 13, 2021

As if to assure us that reaching the most sacred place of international art films did not make her feel soft, Julia Ducournau told the following at the opening of her second-year feature film "Titane": car accident, Close-up of craniotomy, neon lights-lighted car show, girl writhing and grinding in hot pants, body modification, body cut, girl flirting with girl, girl mating with girl, girl mating with machine, chest , Tramp, blood and vomit and about five terrible murders.

This is only in the first 10 minutes. Brother Dane, it's not.

It's not that "Titan" even wants that mantle. Ducournau's follow-up to "Raw" is very comfortable in its genre style, paying tribute to the masters of the past, and actively enjoying sex, violence and terrible prosthetics, because it sings "Long live the new body at the sexiest heights in the movie world." ", Invite everyone to gather together.

This visually evocative, heavy-set movie is not particularly plot-driven, but here is a wide range of brushstrokes: "Titan" tells the story of 32 years of serial murderous flies girl Alexia (Agat Russe) (Er). When the police chased her, they pretended to be a 19-year-old boy who was missing for ten years.

If the boy's father, the fire sergeant, Vincent (Cannes perennial Vincent Lyndon, the character written for him) is willing to believe it for himself, that is understandable. This man is sad and lonely, full of steroid machismo. Ten years later, there is a "son" who can project everything on him. This is already a good proposal.

But before the pair meet and Alexia becomes Adrian, we can experience her murderous aura firsthand. The touch fascinates her; since her childhood car accident, a titanium plate on her head has gradually turned Alexia into a kind of magnet, attracted by metals and repelled by humans.

Ducournau did not show too much pity for those poor fools who knew this firsthand. Please note that with such anarchistic joy, staged a special murder spree that the murderer-in this sense , The movie itself—need to stop and blink, and smile at the absurdity of everything on the screen before fast forwarding.

This is not just bloody for the sake of blood. As she did in "Primitive", Ducournau uses Grand Guignol's excesses as an unexpected way to solve more esoteric issues, here is the issue of gender and gender expression. Just as Alexia has a certain expectation of femininity when dancing in a car, so do firefighters, who polish every edge of themselves to fit the corresponding male ideals.

(Don’t worry, Ducournau and the director of photography Ruben Impens bathe the male and female bodies with similar fluorescent lights.)

If Vincent’s people are more comfortable than living with someone who shows themselves in a less rigid way, I hope they don’t find that this wolf in a firefighter costume is pregnant.

As for the nature of the father, well, let's just say that "Titan" has found the "Fast and Furious" series and will never dare to use it for cars.

So, in this exciting and stupid combination, we added clues to motherhood and selected families, as well as existing clues to self-deception, self-destruction, and sex games, all of which are tied in a knot of physical horror. However, unlike the "primitive", this movie never maintains all this around a valid central metaphor. On the contrary, "Titan" provides a less elegant, more ambitious but also less lawless follow-up.

It's also very interesting, completely different from any other competition in this year's (or any other) Cannes competition. Ducournau combines elements of queer theory with visually gorgeous and clean bloody fun, and is an original work on the international stage. As long as she lets them come, let us hope that she is still Croisette's fixture. Long live the new body.

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