Titane

Yikes, it’s that time of year again where we hand out our annual award for the mind-zonkingly disturbing art-house film of the year. Previous winners include last year’s Possessor and the previous year’s Borders, and if you’ve seen either of them, you’ll know exactly how to prepare for writer/director Julia Ducournau’s unmistakably freaky-deaky horror opus. So warnings apply, for spoilers and more, those that chose to read further, even a basic, bare-bones synopsis may cause some alarm…

Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) is a serial killer. She kills brutally and without obvious motive. She works at some kind of motor-show in which she writhes on top of a car with flames painted on the roof. She kills an obnoxious male fan who attempts to stalk her in a car park. She then has sex with a car and starts emitting motor-oil from her lady-parts that seems to indicate that she is pregnant by the car. Alexia kills a co-worker and goes on the run. In a plot-twist that seems to lift from 2012’s The Impostor, she notices a wanted poster relating to a boy who has been missing for years, and decides to pass herself off as him. That means cutting her hair, taping down her breasts and growing belly, and breaking her own nose in a gas-station mirror. The  boy’s father (Vincent Lindon) is a body-builder who injects steroids into his bottom, but although he seems to accept Alexia, the boy’s mother quickly sees through her disguise…

Nightmare fuel comes in different forms, but Titane is high-end stuff, brilliantly filmed and originally conceived; while there are echoes of Demon Seed, this is very much uncharted territory. Trigger warnings should be loud and clear; if you can’t handle a narrative featuring hair-pin DIY abortions, then don’t even think about opening this particular box. Titane has a dangerous, transgressive feel that makes it something of a trip to behold, even if it’s one uncomfortable ride.

The winner of the 2020 Palme d’Or at Cannes, and with French dialogue, this is an unusual film that defies any easy explanation; a prologue shows that Alexia has a titanium plate in her head after a car accident she caused as a child, but that information hardly explains what follows. Titane mines a similar vibe to the JG Ballard/David Cronenberg collaboration Crash in terms of auto-erotic obsession, but goes off in an even darker direction. It’s an exhilarating, horrific film that you’ll watch with your hands over your eyes if you can bear to look at it at all, but it’s also 2021’s state of the art when it comes to out-of-your-gourd weirdness.

Thanks to Altitude Films for access to Titane, in UK cinemas from Dec 26th 2021.