TITANE (2021) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Julia Ducourau
Agathe Roouselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier,
Bertrand Bonello, Adèle Guigne, Dominique Frot
A seven-year-old girl named Alexia survives a car wreck with a metal plate in her head and grows up to be an exotic dancer with an automobile fetish, and a serial killer. When wanted posters with her picture on them start to turn up in public places, she alters her identity and appearance and changes her name to Adrien, passing herself off as the missing son of a captain in the fire department. She also discovers she's pregnant, which is complicated, because it's not clear how she got that way, or what she's pregnant with, and she's trying desperately to keep anybody, but especially the captain, from finding out. And the captain has an issue of his own, an addiction to steroids that's getting out of control. It's one of the strangest, most gender-bent love stories ever, with an emphasis on physical mutation that David Cronenberg would appreciate. The homoerotic depiction of firefighters as young hunks (all of them male) who spend their spare time dancing with each other leads to a scene where Adrien dances on top of a fire truck, doing the same moves she did when she was Alexia, but now in her male persona. The boys don't know what to make of that, and start to back off and look away. The ambiguity confounds them. Fire figures prominently in the plot, too. A prize-winner at Cannes.
