Under Seared Flesh and Car Sex, Titane Is a Story of Unconditional Love

Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) had an early connection with cars. Her insistence on using her voice to mimic the rev of an engine as a young girl (played by Adèle Guigue) while her irritated father (French director Bertrand Bonello) drove was so undaunted that one day she caused him to lose control of the vehicle. The accident rendered her father mostly unscathed, and Alexia with a titanium plate implanted in her skull. It was a procedure that seemingly strengthened a curious linkage between her and metal and machine, an innate affection for something hot and alive that could never turn away Alexia’s love. As the doctor removes Alexia’s surgical metal headgear, her father looks on with something that can only be described as disdain for his child. Perhaps, it is because he knew what Alexia would become; perhaps, Alexia was just born bad.

Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or-winning follow-up to 2016’s Raw crunches, tears and sizzles. Bones break, skin rips, libidos throb—the human body is pushed to impossible limits. It’s something that Ducournau has already proved familiarity with, but the French director takes things to new extremes with her sophomore film. Titane is a convoluted, gender-bending odyssey splattered with gore and motor oil, the heart of which rests on a simple (if exceedingly perverted) story of finding unconditional acceptance. Eighteen years following the childhood incident, Alexia is a dancer and car model, venerated by ravenous male fans aching to get a picture and an autograph with the punky, sharp-featured young woman. She splays her near-naked form atop the hood of an automobile to the beat of music, contorting and touching herself with simmering lust for the inanimate machine adorned with a fiery paint job to match Alexia’s sexuality. Pink and green and neon yellow glistens on every body (chrome or otherwise) in the showroom, but Ruben Impens’ cinematography follows Alexia as she guides us through this space where she feels most at home.

Yet back at her real home—with her parents, where she still lives—Alexia endures as the deplorable problem child. She shares space with her father but she barely exists, even when they’re in the same room or when he examines her abdomen for latent stomach pain. Alexia also possesses an inexplicable bloodlust, brought to climax (no pun intended) during an intimate moment with fellow car model Justine (Raw breakout Garance Marillier). Suddenly, as if the primal urge had lay dormant her entire life, Alexia embarks upon a brutal killing spree that causes her to assume the identity of a long-missing child while on the run from the authorities. Alexia was already familiar with inflicting violence upon others, like upon the fan who follows her to her car and professes his undying love before forcing himself onto her. Still, something in Alexia didn’t snap until later on—something that cut the final tie between her and other soft-fleshed, warm-blooded bodies.

It’s possible that this had all been catalyzed by an experience immediately following the one with the persistent fan, in which her flame-painted love interest revved its irresistible engine at her doorstep, its headlights beckoning Alexia to climb inside and give her all to it. The result of this renders Alexia’ body in a state which makes it increasingly difficult to hide that she is not the missing teenage boy Adrien that she’s disguised herself as, binding her chest and torso daily to rid herself of the feminine features she more permanently marred on her face. Her visage still fits like a misplaced puzzle piece amidst the rampant machismo of Adrien’s emotionally unstable father Vincent (Vincent Lindon) and his firefighting crew, who are just as suspicious of faux-Adrien’s arrival in Vincent’s life as they are discomforted and confused by his/her androgyny. Nonetheless, Vincent makes it abundantly clear that he doesn’t care who or what Alexia is, nor how many times she tries to hurt and maim him. He wants to believe she is his child, and he loves her completely.