All Blood is Black: The Violent Beauty of Titane (2021)
Courtesy of Kazak Productions, Frakas Productions, Arte France Cinéma, VOO, and BeTV
By Trevor Ruth
I saw this film at an evening showing at my local theater and, being a foreign film, and not an exceptionally popular film at that, it was placed in one of the smaller theaters that could occupy maybe twenty people at most. I saw Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) in the exact same theater with four other people in the audience. This time, I was the only person in the theater and in many ways, I’m glad that I was. A relatively new voice in french extremism, the films of Julia Ducournau are an enigmatic balance of cinema and genre storytelling; the imagery is gruesome but the writing has enough soul for us to empathize with the extreme violence that we are forced to endure. A perfect example of this kind of film can be seen in Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (2008), which is unrelentingly horrific and quite frankly does its best to eliminate any sense of hope for the human spirit but is thoughtful in its intention. Ducournau chooses a more character-driven approach for her films and as a result, the films themselves are much more contemplative (though to be fair, I am solely judging this off of her 2016 debut, Raw). Her sophomore feature, Titane (2021), is a loving follow-up and acts as a fine companion piece as both deal extensively with the relationships hidden within a family unit. Not to mention, both have car crashes and bright colors, so there’s that.
Titane follows Alexia, a young woman in Southern France who—as a result of a car crash when she was younger—has a metal plate implanted in her skull. She grows up to be a showgirl at a local motor show and acts as a serial killer after her working hours, murdering random men and women who presumably come to visit the show and try to make their moves on her. After making a regrettably sloppy kill, Alexia runs away and takes on the identity of Adrien; the son of a firefighter captain named Vincent, who had been missing for more than a decade. To add further tension, Alexia is mysteriously impregnated by one of the cars from the motor show. Yes, you read that correctly. The more her pregnancy progresses, the more difficult it is for her to keep her true identity a secret, especially when her body begins to leak motor oil and random abrasions in her flesh expose a chrome surface hiding beneath the epidermis.
Upon hearing this, the first thing to come to mind is probably Cronenberg, which would make a lot of sense. Cronenberg’s adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s controversial 1973 novel, Crash (1996), and his brilliant science fiction classic, Videodrome (1983), are both prime examples of Cronenberg’s evolution of flesh through metal as well as the fetishization of violence—both certainly seem to act as the modus operandi of Alexia’s character. However, Ducournau asserts that Cronenberg didn’t have any influence on her film; instead, she looked more towards Sam Mendes’ 1917 (2019) and John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) for inspiration, both of which are certainly visible in her direction with Titane. The cinematography evokes a kind of haunting, foreboding presence through long takes that show off a true mastery of movement and lighting. While the opening sequence is more simple, narratively speaking, the film follows its title card with a single take that has the camera following an adult Alexia as she makes her way around the car show, applying makeup with the aid of a side mirror and gyrating in a sensual fashion on the hood of a sexy Cadillac with flame decals. The camera keeps the image of a tiger on the back of Alexia’s jacket as its focal point while the rest of the setting moves at each side of the screen in attention-stealing vibrant hues that properly foreshadows the energetic idiosyncrasy of the film’s tone.
The performances are fantastic. Agatha Rousselle—who seems to be a new talent—absolutely kills it as Alexia: there’s a cold, alien, distant nature to her overall resting expression that speaks to a kind of hidden confusion and hurt. She views herself as her own organism and, judging from the opening scene of Alexia as a child—mimicking the sounds of her father’s car while kicking the back of his seat—she has always known this. It is only through her random acts of violence that she is forced to devolve. She no longer is independent from her genetic family but is now wholly dependent on Vincent’s love as an adoptive father to help her survive, and you can see how uncomfortable she is to have to take on this new identity, to be so vulnerable to a complete stranger, as well as how desperate and terrified she is to have to work her way through her grotesque pregnancy. Rousselle also plays up the more physical scenes flawlessly. When Alexia has to break her own nose in a public restroom to add to her new look as Adrien, we actually feel her face hit the corner of a sink (I was honestly worried that it was going to hit her eye instead) and when she tries to perform an abortion on herself with a knitting needle that she keeps in her hair, you can’t help but cringe and writhe with discomfort.
Vincent Lindon plays Vincent, and also does well. As a firefighting captain he is professional and stoic, but you can see that it’s just a part of his character. He tries to have fun with his boys and with Adrien, but you can see him holding back with his stiff body language and in many ways, he suffers from the same ailments as Alexia: he is uncomfortable with his own body, annoyed with his old age and declining health. He tries to amend this with the use of steroids and even overdoses at one point. Alexia finds him unconscious in the bathroom and attempts to kill him then and there, but she doesn’t. Perhaps there is a bit of sympathy in her decision. Vincent hasn’t seen his son in over a decade and certainly tries his best to make Adrien a part of his life, even if all Adrien is to Vincent is another person to depend on. Alexia tries to run away instead, but as she gets onto a bus and witnesses a woman being harassed by a group of overly misogynistic guys, she can’t help but get back off the bus and return to Vincent. We are instinctively annoyed because we want to see Alexia wreck these guys, but there seems to be more of a cruel connotation to her isolation. Her disguise as Adrien is only camouflage to the world that she almost tries to return to: the mechanical, unfeeling world that made her a ruthless killer. Instead, she chooses to ride out life with a real family, to experience emotion and to reject the mechanical nature bestowed upon her in her youth.
It’s worth noting that even with the prevailing body horror, the film plays out more like a pseudo-shakespearian drama: the focus of the film lies more on the psychosexual tendencies of Alexia and her slow and tortuous transition into Adrien through crossdressing and following Vincent’s lead as a firefighter. Some have seen the film’s approach towards this change in identity as transphobic, and while it certainly doesn’t seem like Alexia is determined to become Adrien, it also doesn’t seem as if she’s doing it spitefully either. It’s simply a means of survival. To some extent, the opposite could be said in that Vincent seems to learn on his own that Adrien is not his biological son and even uncovers Alexia in the restroom at one point, but instead of getting upset about it, he says that he doesn’t care who she is, that she is his son. I think that there’s something that speaks to Vincent’s character about the fact that he rejects the DNA test that the officers offer him (which would determine if Alexia was really his son or not). He never cared if the boy at the precinct was the true Adrien or not. He simply felt alone and without much of a purpose—and if he couldn’t physically meet the requirements of a firefighter, maybe he could meet the requirements of a father instead. To that end, his only true requirement is to love and care for his child; the concept of gender identity is only secondary. It is the care and love that the two share for one another as members of a family that drive the film, regardless of what forms their bodies choose to take.
That being said, the body horror itself is effectively grotesque: at times, the violence feels brutal and realistic in a Saulnier fashion. Alexia murders a stalker of hers by firmly stabbing him in the ear with her knitting needle, forcing him to writhe and drool sporadically all over her shoulder as he surely trembles through a violent seizure. She even murders a man by planting the leg of a bar stool in his mouth and adding weight to crush his skull. Meanwhile the physical transformation of Alexia as her pregnancy progresses is disturbing, though still rather preposterous given the subject matter. Yes, it’s nasty to see her body leak motor oil through her orifices and to see the literal veins as she surely suffers from some metal infection in her body, though the however small bits of comedy that leak through the carnage act as bits of humanity in the absurdism. You are going to cringe and laugh at Adrien dancing seductively on top of a fire engine as the rest of the team watches with confusion and disdain, but in that uncomfortable feeling you experience a kind of beauty as well because it is where Alexia appears the most expressive. This is not without its negative consequences. Vincent walks in and sees Alexia’s display and suddenly, he realizes that maybe he was wrong; that the preconceived ideal that was put in his head of who his son should be, to him, was never really there. That Adrien is not Adrien, but Alexia. He shuts himself away in a dark bedroom and lights himself on fire before suddenly putting it out; maybe to tease at a kind of suicidal loss, or—most likely—to bring himself back to reality, to wake himself up from the dream that he saw himself living. In the film’s concluding scene, Alexia finally gives birth to her deformity, dying in the process. Vincent, who was originally going to leave the room for her to fend for herself, helps her through labor and embraces the new lifeform that Alexia has made, promising that he will always be there. There is also a beauty in this scene as well, as Vincent—who was unable to be with his son for the majority of his life—now has the chance to start over with a new child, one he intends to protect forever.
To say that I was changed on a spiritual level by Titane would be a lie, but for all of its brutality and formal simplicity, there lies a romance that I find quite endearing. I’m glad I was alone to experience it in the theater, not because it made me cringe audibly and not because it gave me the chance to laugh and writhe of my own free will, but because it allowed me to feel the film more deeply. One thing is for certain: for all of the gruesome elements of her films, Ducournau tells stories unlike any other and blends genres seamlessly to invent what is essentially her own organism—much like how Alexia creates her own organism in the film’s denouement. To that end, Titane isn’t exactly a film that is easy to define in relation to other films. It isn’t a horror, nor is it a drama; but it is a Ducournau film, one that—much like its main character—is disturbing and sad, but also quite beautifully human.
Trevor Ruth is a writer from Livermore, California, whose work has previously appeared in Occam’s Razor, The Southampton Review, and other literary journals. He writes fiction and poetry that utilizes slipstream to subvert genre ideals, as well as critical essays on film and art.