Titane

EDIT: I initially wrote a first review for this, which is mostly outdated since I have a completely different opinion on the movie. It's still down there below this update. Julia Ducournau's Titane is an hypnotizing experience, and letting it take over your mind and your thoughts is the best thing you can do. Especially if you're frustrated with what's unfolding before your eyes. There's a lot to take in, maybe too much on a first viewing actually. Ducournau's new, highly stylistic baby uncommonly explores a lot of topics, and, several times, it feels like this exploration of a great many things loses itself in the way of trying to develop its ideas, and ends up barely scratching the surface of its sheer potential and many themes. But it does not. There's so much things unfolding in here that some parts will inevitably confuse you, and not every single thing that's touched on in here will get a proper "classic" narrative conclusion, but all of it plays into what the movie is and what it's trying to do. It's a frustrating, yet unique experience that will disarm and disturb you deeply, and not just with its -many- visually shocking moments. Titane showcases bodies and uncomfortableness with great expertise. It depicts people feeling trapped in their bodies, and altering them to attempt to fit in a normative society. In many ways, Titane can be interpreted as a trans narrative. I wouldn't go as far as to say it fits very, very specific parts of the transgender experience - some parts may feel this way in great detail, but others definitely do not fit that. So, yeah, Titane tells a unique story and touches on a lot of various themes in an unusual fashion, causing it to be overwhelming at times. But after some proper cooling down, it does not appear as messy, nor a rough sketch of a potentially amazing movie with great, though unexploited potential. It is exactly what it wants to be, it knows what it wants to be, and it'll hit you with everything it has, all neatly packaged and expertly tied up together by Julia Ducournau in a one of a kind tour-de-force. With its striking imagery, highly stylistic approach, unsettling atmosphere and undeniable thematic richness, Titane is a fascinating movie experience that only gets better and better each time you think about it. Original review, which is pretty different: Welp, that's sad. I thought I was going to absolutely love TITANE given everything that was being said about it, and its excellent trailer. I get what the film is doing, and what it wants to say. I get why the "tonal shift" is here. I get the messiness and why it can work in the movie's favor. But I don't love it. It felt very restrained to me, even the "body horror" scenes didn't make me feel much as they were happening despite being very fond of this type of stuff. But upon thinking about it again, the entire thing fascinates me. I want to go back to it, because despite my personnal problems with it, this still feels like a fresh, one-of-a-kind experience. I feel like TITANE never quite goes for what it wants, and, in return, never reaches the heights of Julia Ducournau's previous effort, RAW, one of my favorite films. In never gets quite as intense as RAW to me, but ideally, we should avoid comparing the two. Even if there are more than a few thematic similarities between both beasts, TITANE works in a very different way, and packs its punches differently than RAW did. It's way slower, and its impactful scenes, while they may or may not shock you depending on what you're into, will definitely stick with you for a while. I have a lot of respect for Julia Ducournau, for what she crafted and told here, as well as in RAW. TITANE might bore you, or disappoint you, but beyond that, there's no denying that what you'll see will hypnotize you, and will remain with you for a while. We need more films like this, and I'll gladly go watch anything she does. If you're on here reading reviews for this and you somehow stumble on this one early on, stop reading reviews for it - unclear story spoilers and simple details may raise your expectations a bit too much or give you a false sense of what this movie is. It's very hard to put into words without spoiling it.