Mubi Monday: Titane (2021)

The second theatrical feature from writer-director Julia Ducournau, Titane only serves to show how right people were to celebrate Raw, her previous film. Titane manages to be a very different beast from Raw, yet there are many similarities in the ways that Ducournau explores female experiences that are at once dark and unique and horrific while also being very identifiable when boiled down to their very basic elements.

Now that I've fooled you into thinking I might be able to talk about Titane in an intelligent and insightful manner, let me sum up the plot. Agatha Rousselle plays Alexia, a woman who finds herself wanting to have vigorous sex with a car. This is the result of a childhood car accident that led to her having a piece of titanium attached to her skull. Alexia is also a pretty prolific killer, which we find out quite early on in the movie. That would be enough to make Titane a weird and interesting film, but things get even stranger when Alexia decides to make herself temporarily safe by pretending that she is the long-lost son of a firefighter named Vincent (Vincent Lindon). It may seem like an obvious ruse to see through, but Vincent is blinded by the power of his need to have his son back with him.

As bizarre as the plot is, Ducournau takes viewers on a journey that somehow moves from that strange opening act to explore the bonds of love, the blinkers that people can put on when it allows them to basically have what they want, and the extreme highs and lows of parenthood. It's a body horror movie, and there is at least one sequence that made me wince and turn away, but it's also grounded by a central relationship that allows the film to have a surprisingly warm heart.

Rousselle is excellent in the lead role, whether she's showing her body to someone she wants to entrap or hiding her curves under baggy clothes and tape. Fleeting between the traditionally feminine and masculine, she becomes an androgynous broken mirror, troubling the people who look at her with the cracked reflections that they see. Whether being vicious or vulnerable, Rousselle is a captivating presence onscreen. Lindon is almost equally good, showing much more emotion in most of his scenes. As viewers aren't always quite sure of the motivation of his character, his ambiguous performance helps to both get us onside with Rousselle's character and get us quietly hoping for a very unlikely happy ending. There are other people in the cast (with a couple of important supporting characters played by Garance Marillier and Laïs Salameh), but it feels like it's effectively a two-hander for most of the runtime.

There's superb music by Jim Williams, as well as an impressive soundscape that matches, and often elevates, the visuals (I'll even remember to mention the DP here, Ruben Impens). No one element stands out as a weak link in the chain, making it hard to consider this film anything less than perfect.

I cannot think of anyone else recently who is making the kind of intelligent and disturbing horror that Ducournau has made her signature, and I look forward to whatever she delivers next. Raw was great, if a little bit too cute and clever in the finale. Titane is a step up, and shows someone with unreserved courage in her convictions. Rightly so.

9/10

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Raw (2016)

Written and directed by Julia Ducournau, Raw is to the cannibal movie what Ginger Snaps is to the werewolf film, to start this review off with some obvious Shorthand 101. Both are coming of age tales, both provide moments that you expect with a number of twists that you don't, and both are anchored by excellent female lead performances.

Garance Marillier is Justine, a young woman starting her university education to become a vet. She is enrolled in the same institution as her older sister, Alexia (played by Ella Rumpf), and ends up sharing a room with a gay man named Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella). She also ends up finally eating meat as part of her diet, now that she is away from her parents and their vegetarian lifestyle. This leads to her getting a taste for more than just the selection available from any butcher shop.

What starts off as a simple tale of a young woman overwhelmed by a new stage of her life at university, and all of the freedoms and opportunities that come with it, chances to both succeed and fail, soon develops into a tale of, well . . . . actually, a young woman overwhelmed by a new stage of her life at university. She just happens to also develop a taste for VERY fresh meat. Justine changes quite quickly, admittedly, but it's not an immediate transformation, and a lot of the first half of the movie shows the typical "growing pains" of any teenager suddenly away from their parents and deciding to create, or rather recreate, their own identity as they move further into adulthood.

Marillier is fantastic in the central role, believably transforming from a shy and sheltered young woman into someone who loses a lot of her inhibitions and starts to wear her difference from others like a badge with "Fuck You" printed on it. Rumpf is equally good, and the two really convince as sisters who always seem to love one another, even during times when they fall out. Oufella has the easiest of the three main roles, but he does well to portray a supportive and friendly figure who doesn't mind anyone else being a bit weird, up to a point.

Ducournau manages to tell this story without making every scene a gross-out one, although she also puts in a number of scenes that definitely aren't for the squeamish (probably best not to watch this while eating a meal). It helps that she has done such a great job with the development of the lead characters, making viewers hope for the best for them, even as things start to look worse and worse. The technical side of things cannot be faulted, especially admirable as this is the first solo feature from Ducournau (having previously given us one short film and a TV movie co-directed with Virgile Bramly, which also happens to be about an eating disorder), and there's also a fine score by Jim Williams accompanying the visuals, as well as a few lively tunes on the soundtrack.

Some viewers may wish they could have more moments of gore, and there's a "punchline" that could divide opinion (I thought it was great), but this is an interesting cannibal film that comes very close to being as good as the excellent, but a lot more darkly comedic, Ravenous.

8/10

Raw can be bought here.
Americans can buy it here.
Alternatively, you can always click on either of those links and then shop for whatever you want. Which also helps me while letting you treat yourself.