NYFF 59 Review: Flesh, Motor Oil, and Requited Love in Juila Ducournau’s Carnal Sensation, ‘Titane’
“I’m here... I’m here…”
The word on the street is true: Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winning film, Titane, is a sensation. The film that cultivated considerable buzz for its corporeal extremes — through shock and awe, violence and distress, blood and motor oil — finds itself in a situation not unlike that of Ducournau’s previous film Raw. But for as much as Titane succeeds in this area, and for good reason, one should not reduce such a brilliantly rich film to the points of its body horror premise. No, these trappings are merely a fine tuned vehicle for Ducournau’s humanist concerns with love and humanity, two sentiments that play out with warmth and sincerity and come together to make one of the year’s best cinematic experiences.
Ducournau’s sophomore feature is ultimately a refinement from her debut. A precise and succinct through line, that doesn’t yield to the blatant nor obvious, emerges with Titane that never quite materialized with Raw. Where Raw may have felt opaque in obtuse ways, never settling holistically in my personal experience from perfunctory story elements, Titane hones in on its symbolism and narrative threads to be in service of one another, connecting them in compelling ways and forming interesting spaces that welcome dissection, particularly when it comes to Ducournau’s implementation of body horror.
Raw, the cannibal coming-of-age meat fest, fleshed out a complicated story of self-discovery with punctuations of disturbing imagery. The same is equally true for Titane which features amalgams of distorted flesh and carnal metal to conjure notions of resilience and transformation. In proximity to the dressings of Cronenberg’s Videodrome or Crash, the body becomes a canvas for our characters to deliberately mark themselves with their personal failings and pain.
Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a victim of a troubled upbringing with her own sordid past, has a metal plate in her skull from a childhood car accident that becomes a precursor for a larger metallic growth that starts to form inside her during the narrative. Vincent (Vincent Lindon), after losing his son and subsequently his wife from the ensuing fallout, becomes the victim of an aging body that he tries to ale with a dangerous amount of steroids. The realization of both protagonists through body horror and narrative is one that amounts to two characters who compliment one another and are deserving of each other’s (platonic) love.
One scene in particular is indicative of what I feel is the crux of Ducournau’s stance on the matter, and perhaps the most sentimental in the film. At a party hosted by Vincent’s firefighter troop, one member intends to reveal Alexia’s secret, a secret that would ultimately undermine their relationship. But before a word could be spoken, Vincent shuts the idea down, accepting his own ignorance because the “real” has no bearing on his current reality, which sees him happy in a way he hasn’t been in years. As the remainder of the scene plays out, Vincent dances with Alexia to the trance of The Future Island’s “Lighthouse,” paired lovingly with Ducournau’s cinematic eye where bodily plights are forgotten and joyous embrace is felt. The ending note is a rousing sentiment of beautiful acceptance where our characters meaningfully recognize their own capacity to love and that they are deserving of it too, from themselves and others.
Titane understands the ability to afford love no matter the severity of one’s failures, grievances, or sins that might otherwise make someone unlovable. Sometimes it takes the reciprocated love of others to realize what worth we have. To be so fucked up, so damaged and feel the compliment of someone else’s love is truly a special sentiment. And in the chilling, distressed metal body of Titane, there is flesh. Flesh worth loving, and flesh worth saving.
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