#Titane julia ducournau skin#

Alexia also possesses an inexplicable bloodlust, brought to climax (no pun intended) during an intimate moment with fellow car model Justine ( Raw breakout Garance Marillier). She shares space with her father but she barely exists, even when they’re in the same room or when he examines her abdomen for latent stomach pain.

Yet back at her real home-with her parents, where she still lives-Alexia endures as the deplorable problem child. Pink and green and neon yellow glistens on every body (chrome or otherwise) in the showroom, but Ruben Impens’ cinematography follows Alexia as she guides us through this space where she feels most at home. She splays her near-naked form atop the hood of an automobile to the beat of music, contorting and touching herself with simmering lust for the inanimate machine adorned with a fiery paint job to match Alexia’s sexuality. Eighteen years following the childhood incident, Alexia is a dancer and car model, venerated by ravenous male fans aching to get a picture and an autograph with the punky, sharp-featured young woman. Titane is a convoluted, gender-bending odyssey splattered with gore and motor oil, the heart of which rests on a simple (if exceedingly perverted) story of finding unconditional acceptance. It’s something that Ducournau has already proved familiarity with, but the French director takes things to new extremes with her sophomore film.

#Titane julia ducournau skin#

Bones break, skin rips, libidos throb-the human body is pushed to impossible limits. Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or-winning follow-up to 2016’s Raw crunches, tears and sizzles. Perhaps, it is because he knew what Alexia would become perhaps, Alexia was just born bad. As the doctor removes Alexia’s surgical metal headgear, her father looks on with something that can only be described as disdain for his child.

It was a procedure that seemingly strengthened a curious linkage between her and metal and machine, an innate affection for something hot and alive that could never turn away Alexia’s love. The accident rendered her father mostly unscathed, and Alexia with a titanium plate implanted in her skull. Her insistence on using her voice to mimic the rev of an engine as a young girl (played by Adèle Guigue) while her irritated father (French director Bertrand Bonello) drove was so undaunted that one day she caused him to lose control of the vehicle. Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) had an early connection with cars.