The first post-pandemic Cannes Film Festival has come to a dramatic conclusion with the awarding of the Palme d’Or. Julia Ducournau claimed the award for Titane, a body horror-thriller film that was easily the most talked about film at Cannes. While there was no outright frontrunner at this year’s festival, Titane left audiences polarized.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
After surviving a car crash as a child, a woman has some… interesting relationships with automobiles. Our protagonist, Alexia, is a dancer at a series of sleazy underground car meets. At one point, she has sex with and is impregnated by a car – lactating black oil and all. She then adopts a male gender and passes herself off as the missing son of a heartsick father who was lost a decade ago.
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Read that last paragraph back, and remember to pick your jaw up off the floor. Titane pulls no punches when it comes to shock value. The film is graphic and uneasy, chock full of Tarantino-esque violence and plenty of what the f*ck moments. One festival-goer captured the audience’s feelings in a series of tweets, claiming “so many walkouts and shrieks of horrified, delighted laughter… genuinely demented, totally original body horror serial killer car sex buddy movie.”
Titane has divided cinema lovers. Some praise the film as a wildly provocative, gender-confronting masterpiece. Conversely, others have deemed it the worst film they’ve ever seen at Cannes. Whether the film conjures a joyous gasp or a stomach-churning squeal, Titane’s ability to invoke such visceral reactions from audiences cements it as a must-watch.
Titane stars Agathe Rousselle and Vincent Lindon and is Ducournau’s follow-up to her 2016 film Raw. Ducournau is just the second woman to take home the top prize at Cannes, joining Jane Campion for her film The Piano in 1993.
Additionally, the festival’s second prize, The Grand Prix, was jointly awarded to Juho Kusomanen’s Compartment No. 6 and Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero.
Check out the trailer for Titane below and be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments! Lastly, for more film news from Wavypack, check out the Pride Film Roundup.
