Film

[FILM]

Written by EILEEN G’SELL

If you’ve ever wanted to fuck a fire truck, Titane is the movie for you.

It’s the movie for you if you’ve ever savored the stench of pumping gas, the stir of shifting gears or the tremulous purr of a V8 engine. It’s the movie for you if you’ve ever found machines as erotic as they are e cient, as ins iring as they are destructive to our earthbound habitats. If you’ve ever wondered why men — and women — prefer a stick shift to a slush box. If you’ve found the term tor ue a turn-on, or “muscle car” conceptually (if not literally) compelling. If you’ve ever been appalled or confounded by the power of desire — or what even counts as desire and not crude, libidinous urge. n an early scene, to the beat of oing t to eath by the ills, the camera voyeuristically roves through a motor show for over three hy notic minutes, t isting under, over and around car hoods, fenders and the omen’s bodies writhing up against them. et off me, asshole says a etite brunette in black leather accosted from behind ands off, sir, says the bouncer escorting him away. “Touch with your eyes.”

The second feature from bodyhorror virtuoso ulia ucournau, Titane implores us to do the same — to be thrilled and repulsed in equal measure. At times one might easily forget that the movie is rench art-house fare, because its excessive violence and automotive conceit feel so utterly American. But with its hyper-stylized visuals and visceral investment in gender trouble, ucournau resents a critique of masculinity that feels very un-American — ultimately seeking to shock more than moralize. amed for the titanium late fitted to its protagonist’s skull after a childhood car accident, Titane follows a 30-something woman named le ia gathe ousselle , whose sexual attraction to cars is as all-consuming as her appetite for killing. When the body count at last draws attention from police, le ia ado ts the ersona of drien, a missing teenage boy whose face she sees displayed in the Marseilles-Provence airport. hat ensues is a gender-bending, genre-shredding mélange of horror, thriller and domestic drama (think Drive, Boys Don’t Cry and a dash of the anish film Shelley). But for all of Titane’s resemblances to both American and European in uences a articular killing s ree, set to a bouncy Caterina Caselli tune, feels very arantino , the film as a hole is defiantly ucournau, and feminist, at heart

If Raw, ucournau’s debut exploring cannibalism and female a etites, rom ted fainting in the theaters, Titane leads less to nausea than a state of electrified s ueamishness most heightened in scenes of Alexia’s body in frenzied states of female abjection and self-mutilation. As drien, ousselle’s lanky frame is convincing beneath an oversized hoodie, but her efforts to maintain such androgyny take on masochistic proportions. We are asked to consider Alexia’s predatory nature toward others alongside her brutality toward her own body, to reconcile her violence as a woman with her vulnerability as a erson resenting, for half of the film, as a terrified trans man

At the same time that Alexia’s female body is under both spectacular and invisible assault, the male body is exposed as equally prone to self-destruct. Adrien’s father, incent incent ondon , is a lonely fire ca tain doggedly attem ting to reserve his hysi ue, bruising his own backside with testosterone injections. “Are you sick drien asks, his first ords spoken aloud after disrupting his father’s nightly bathroom ritual. o, incent res onds, just old s a figure of aternalism, incent is both a metonym for masculine power and a reminder of its fragile existence. Do we root for Alexia to kill him off too, or admire their growing bond with each other? Who is more at risk — father or son? Rather than rely on tired rape revenge tropes (Promising Young Woman, anyone , ucournau probes the darker compulsions at the cross hairs of heterosexuality and white supremacy. o ard the film’s clima , a simulated forest fire surrounds incent’s haggard body, reminding the viewer of the Bukowski quote tattooed between Alexia’s breasts: ove is a dog from hell ike the ainted ames that adorn the Cadillac hood she fellates in the film’s first act, desire is al ays dangerous, and hat counts as com assion nearly always combustible.

If Titane came with trigger warnings, they ould scroll for longer than the end credits. Those uncomfortable ith bodily uids, maiming or motor oil will not last long in the theater — nor anyone expecting a mindless joy ride through adrenaline-charged violence. But for those of us who like to think while we s uirm, to reconsider hat makes us suddenly recoil, ucournau’s latest is a galvanizing trip. n