Titane

Directed by Julia Ducournau

Running time: 1hr48 | REVIEWED BY CATHERINE BRAY

Agathe Rousselle stars in Titane, by Julia Ducournau

This review originally ran at the Cannes Film Festival

The metal titanium (titane in French) is named after the Titans — ancient, incestuous gods, who according to legend were banished, overthrown or exiled. The parallels are not direct, but the lead in Titane goes on an odyssey that feels curiously classical in its narrative form, like a David Cronenberg film written by Homer. (This is a good thing). A childhood incident marks the hero for life. A sexual, sensual dance leads to a pursuit, which leads to a retributive murder. Authority figures are overthrown, gendered disguises are assumed. An impossible pregnancy is concealed. It’s all very Ancient Greece.

But cinema, of course, hadn’t been invented in Ancient Greece, and Titane is a sensational work of sound and vision to its steely core, from the throaty thrum of an engine to the erotic gleam of polished bodywork. Jim Williams’ score stalks and prowls, aided and abetted by well-chosen pop picks. It’s the kind of film that will hopefully make a star of its lead, Agathe Rousselle, whose first feature this is. She doesn’t just carry the film, she carries it to full term and pushes it out into the world, kicking and screaming. She smashes every note on the scale that the performance demands of her, from sensual seductress, to dead-eyed killer, to vulnerable waif and beyond. Credit must of course go to writer-director Julia Ducournau for discovering her, casting her and creating the space for her to do her thing.

I’m so pleased Ducournau is confirmed here as the real deal. I felt that she was, from the moment her debut, Raw, began to unfold in the Critics’ Week section of Cannes in 2016, and said so in my review for Variety, but I’m often wrong about that kind of thing. Ducournau is a major talent, a stylist and a thinker, not just throwing together a banquet of gonzo images for the sake of it, not simply shocking for shock’s sake. Anybody can draw up a shopping list of edgelord provocations and go grab a camera, but the provocations in Titane have weight and meaning, exploring themes of “passing” in a world that still labels, reads and categorises people (and people’s potential) according to the slippery and fluid thing we call gender. Biology here is both fact and fiction; malleable, strange and changeable, but also the source code writing undeniable vulnerabilities into the flesh-and-blood vehicle in which we find ourselves embodied.

TITANE (2021) Written by Julia Ducournau | Shot by Ruben Impens | Edited by Jean-Christophe Bouzy