Titane

Story

Titane is about Alexia, a young woman who experiences a traumatic car accident as a child, leaving her with a metal plate in her head. As Alexia grows up, she grapples with the impact of this incident, developing a strange fixation on cars and a tendency towards violent, sexual behaviour. One of the central themes of Titane is Alexia’s rejection of her biological family. After the car crash, she seems to feel her that parents had failed to properly protect her. So Alexia runs away, seeking to build a new “chosen family” that will accept her for who she is, rather than trying to fit into the family she was born into. This is a journey that will surely resonate with many viewers, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community who have had to distance themselves from unaccepting relatives. Alexia’s acts of shocking violence, including stabbing her sexual partners, stem from this deep desire to find belonging and forge her own identity.

Review

Mirrors and reflections play a major role as Alexia struggles to reconcile her outward appearance with her true sense of self. The film’s Gothic, sci-fi-tinged aesthetic  reinforces the idea of the human body as something unstable and ever-changing. Through Alexia’s journey, Titane delves into a valid question: are we still “human” if our bodies have become radically altered?

Ducournau isn’t afraid to push boundaries and make audiences uncomfortable as she wrestles with weighty subject matter. Another particularly striking aspect of Titane is the way it links trauma, violence, and sexuality. Alexia’s car accident as a child has clearly left deep scars, manifesting in her strange erotic fixation on automobiles. Even her sexual encounters with human partners involve shocking acts of brutality, as if Alexia can only express intimacy through violence. This unsettling blending of the erotic and the horrific is a trademark of Ducournau’s filmmaking.

She’s unafraid to explore the uglier, more primal sides of human nature and desire. In Titane, this results in some genuinely disturbing yet captivating sequences, like Alexia’s explicit dance routines atop fire trucks. Particularly powerful is the way Ducournau connects Alexia’s violence to the larger societal violence and discrimination often faced by LGBTQ+ individuals. Alexia’s attacks on her sexual partners, both male and female, mirror the senseless acts of hatred directed at queer and trans people in the real world. Titane forces the audience to confront the trauma and rage that can build up when one’s identity is continuously denied or attacked.

Titane is a bold, boundary-pushing work of cinema that further solidifies Ducournau’s reputation as a major talent. Her willingness to tackle complex themes around gender, sexuality, and trauma through the lens of body horror sets her apart from many of her peers. Titane is provocative. At its core, it is a story about the power of finding your own “family,” whether biological or chosen, in the face of trauma and societal rejection. Alexia’s journey may be extreme, but her struggles to define her identity and carve out a space of belonging is thought-provoking and unsettling.

The Gothic, sci-fi-tinged aesthetic  reinforces the idea of the human body as something unstable and ever-changing. Through Alexia’s journey, Titane delves into a valid question: are we still “human” if our bodies have become radically altered?