Titane * * * *

 This is from the director who gave us Raw, and like that film it comes with an equal amount of inexplicable notoriety, with stories of people fainting or running out the door.  I did neither. There was no need to. Besides, I would miss the good bits - and there are plenty of those.

The story itself is just as whacky as Raw, but like Raw it draws you in so that you happily accept the ridiculous scenarios writer/director Julia Ducournau hits you with - and she hits!

It's not the first film to explore car/human relationship on a sexual level  (I'm thinking of David Cronenberg's Crash), but beyond that it has its own story to tell. 

Alexia gets intimate with a Cadillac.
(Yeah, I get it)

As a child Alexia is involved in a car crash and has to have a titanium plate put in her skull.  Does this affect her?  I think so.  Flash forward to ten or so years later and she is a stripper at custom car shows. Whereas most girls pose with the cars, Alexia kind of humps them.  The boys love it. 

We are quickly introduced to her indifference to other peoples pain and her weapon of choice - a rather large hair pin.  After having sex with a vintage Cadillac (I must admit I found it quite attractive too), Alexia goes on a murderous rampage and earns the film an R certificate.  Then she seems to realize this could get her in trouble and goes on the run.  

Seeing a poster for a child who went missing years ago she decides to modify her own face in a public bathroom (thus re-enforcing the R certificate), then declares herself as said missing child .  She is duly taken home by the missing child's father who delights in being reunited with his son after so many years.  The father is a fireman and he has a group of young men who serve under him at his very male oriented fire station where they all seem to live. 

To pass as a male Alexia never talks and she keeps her breast bound, but soon she has another problem. She appears to have got pregnant from the Cadillac and is starting to lactate sump oil.  How is she going to keep this from her "Dad"?

Her relationship with her father seems to be one of mutual agreement not to talk about the obvious fact that they are not related. It seems he just needs someone to love in a pure and unconditional way, and this is just how Titane will slip under your guard.  

In the end Titane is really quite a beautiful confronting, exciting, audacious and ultimately moving story and film, which also proves that Julia Ducournau wasn't just a one hit wonder with Raw.