As a little girl, Alexia, had a car crash and was left with both a titanium plate in her skull and a love for cars. As a grown up, Alexia is a popular dance performer at car shows. She has sex with a car, inside of it, and becomes pregnant. One evening, a fan follows and kisses her through the car window, so she kills him with a metal spike. Alexia also kills several people at a party and then sets her house on fire, killing her parents. She sees a public artist's sketch of a possible look of a missing boy, Adrien, who disappeared a decade ago. In order to hide from the police, Alexia cuts her hair and presents herself as Adrien, and his father, fireman Vincent, accepts her. They live inside his house, while she hides her pregnancy. Upon finally admitting her real name to him, Alexia gives birth to a baby with a metal spine. Alexia dies by losing her titanium plate, while Vincent accepts the baby.
"Titane" is a typical example of a movie confusing shock and disgust for quality and talent. The weird, meandering story about a heroine Alexia who disguises herself as the long lost son of Vincent doesn't even pretend to make any sense or logic (Vincent even refuses a DNA test, even though he cannot know how his missing 7-year old son could look like as a grown up), and instead presents itself a subconscious parabel that only works on the allegorical level. However, since there is no inspiration or ingenuity in the film, allegories and symbols alone cannot carry all of this, regardless of all the important messages they conveys. There are some noble messages here regarding Alexia's transformations involving a titanium plate in her skull, her disguise as a man, or her baby-hybrid of a car-metal and a human (people should be accepted for who they are as a person, in essence of their character, and not by their physical appearance which is relative), but since all of this is so weak, the movie just seems to desperately take these transgender themes as a human shield from its lacklaster execution. The writer and director Julia Ducournau just lists random bizarre "body horror" scenes—Alexia has sex with a car (via a gear stick?) and becomes pregnant with it, so she hides her stomach by using duct tape to make it more narrow, which then leaves scars on her breasts and stomach; a failed self-performed abortion using a metal spike; she slams her head on the toilet sink to break and "change" her nose to be more like the sketch of Adrien; she scratches her pregnant belly until she pierces her skin and reveals metal under the blood—without any purpose or meanng. On top of all, as Adrien, Alexia doesn't speak almost at all for the next hour of the film, in fear of revealing to Vincent that she has a woman's voice. A disturbing patchwork, only for fans of macabre cinema.
Grade:+
No comments:
Post a Comment