Here were my thoughts on Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” posted on 07.14.21 at the Cannes Film Festival. It ended up winning the Palme d’Or and is set to be released this coming Friday.
It’s quite something that Cannes decided Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” a batshit crazy midnight movie, and I’m being subtle here, should make it into competition at this year’s festival.
Consider this not a review, but an amalgam of thoughts about the film. Because, otherwise, if I describe what this film is about it would take away the sheer thrill of discovering this movie’s per-minute surprises. Yes, this is a midnight movie through and through, one filled with a suffocating amount of implausibilities that somehow don’t even matter.
After her film debut “Raw,” which seems absolutely tame in comparison to this one, Ducournau is trying to go balls-out bonkers here, raising the insanity levels to 11. She has reinvented cinematic body-horror via a combination of Cronenberg, motor fuel and sex. It’s really singular, shocking, repulsive and incendiary stuff. All slickly directed by the young French filmmaker.
There are so many implausibility issues in the movie, but I frankly don’t care about them. Unlike many of the competition entries this year, this silly but horrific film retained my attention from beginning to end. [B+]
Edward Berger seems to have settled on what comes next. His Lance Armstrong biopic, starring Austin Butler, is now holding casting calls, with production eyed for January.