Julia Docournau, writer and director of Titane, certainly has a vision. It’s one she gets across impeccably with her latest film. The first thing you need to know about this film is that if you are an appreciator of bat sh*t cinematic insanity, then this film is for you.
Put it this way, Neon, the studio releasing the French film, released—as everyone always does—a synopsis. This one or two sentence encapsulation of what the film is about is simply listed as, “Titane: A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys, often used in medical prostheses due to its pronounced biocompatibility.”
The film’s moniker directly relates to our story as our main character, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), has a titanium plate nailed into her skull after a car accident finds her bashing her head against the backseat window when she was a child. That’s it! One could argue that because of that car crash, she’s altered in a mental manner that has led her to commit a few murders in the first act that has her quickly on the run. Oh, there’s also a scene where she appears to be violently having sex with a car. So, there’s that.
French authorities have her description, and although Alexia has altered her appearance, she lives under constant fear that she will have to pay for her murderous ways. What’s a girl to do? Well, make herself look like a boy and… become one. Specifically, one that disappeared 10 years ago. Alexia just shows up at the boy’s father’s fire station—where he’s the Captain—and the reunion that is a decade in the making is clearly what Vincent (Vincent Lindon) has been living for all these years. Even though Alexia may not quite look exactly like what the good Captain expected his son to look like, he chalks it up to age and frankly—doesn’t even make it an issue.
Alexia keeps quiet and Vincent believes that his son’s inability to speak is due to the trauma of being kidnapped for 10 years. It evolves organically, but a real father-child relationship develops and even though the boy’s mother is skeptical, it does not matter. As time progresses, even the firemen under Vincent’s charge warm up to Alexia and she (as he) takes an interest in what her “father” does for a living. The idea of playing the role of a hero instead of extoller of violence, death, and misery is an extremely attractive one. There is a lot of baggage on both sides. Maybe a lot more on Alexia’s half of the coin! But we experience what the disappearance of a child can do to a couple as Vincent and his son’s mother are barely on speaking terms—so his arrival has kicked that wasp nest.
There is, without question, the fact that Docournau is an imaginative filmmaker. There’s her wild story idea that is the world of Titane. Then, there’s the ability to execute it. There is also no question that the helmer has the gift of storytelling. It is the rare soul who originates the idea of a young girl who was greatly traumatized by a car accident winding up snapping one day and going on a bit of a murder spree. She is then practically raped by an automobile that results in this story going places that will have your world rocked.
As a film journalist and critic, over this writer’s career—that spans over two decades—there have been a handful of films that challenge the concept of filmmaking virtuosity versus bombastic storytelling. Mother!, Drive, and Nightcrawler come to mind initially. All three are masterpieces but have to thread a needle that is, with the benefit of the passage of time, one that seems downright impossible.
Titane commences with a gasp moment and proceeds to roll them out like candy at Halloween. Speaking of which, the timing of the film’s release with that holiday merely weeks away, is a stroke of marketing inspiration. Films as violently peculiar as Docournau’s have a welcomed seat at the October release table, but the filmmaker has remarkably pushed it with her latest. I welcome the cinema of bat sh*t crazy and have basked in its unique glow for decades.
Sadly, as the film progressed, this writer became less and less connected to the story as a whole. One could argue that the linking between audience and storyteller was fractured profusely with each stab coming from Alexia. Not one to expect reasoning from a character who has discounted humanity by the taking of a life, but usually, there is a through-line between the act of extinguishing life and logic behind it.
That is never established in Titane.
Yet this aspect needs to be shouted to the hills. What actress Rousselle delivers amongst all this cinematic insanity is beyond brilliant and has instantly become a thespian whose name alone will get our attention. There are characters who have to juggle a bevy of balls through a performance. Rousselle is tasked with juggling what seems to be an infinitesimal number of balls in the air. She does so in a fierce manner which is continuously commanding and if not for her, this audience member would have checked out of Titane much before those credits roll. Instead, the madness of the film is tolerated all in the name of a star-making turn by its lead performer.
Grade: C