Cast: Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon
Let’s just say this: Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winning film starts with a female serial killer having sex with a car that impregnates her. It gets even wilder from there, and also strangely sweet. Basically, it’s the kind of movie you have to see to believe. Ducournau’s debut feature was the gruesome cannibal tale Raw, and she once again does not hold back in this fable about Alexia (Rousselle), a woman with a metal plate in her head from a automotive accident as a child who has a taste for murder and an attraction to cars. With the police on her tail, she disguises herself as a long missing boy and is quasi-adopted by the boy’s father (Lindon), who will do anything to fill the hole in his heart, even believing that this silent, pregnant woman excreting oil is his son. Titane is visceral and often disgusting, but ultimately a story about familial devotion and the kind of love parents and children seek from one another.
The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on 13 July 2021, where Ducournau became the second female director to win the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top award, as well as the first female filmmaker to win solo. It was selected as the French entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards
