There are films that, from what their director decides to show us in his footage, seem destined to the controversy between professional critics and moviegoers. Not necessarily not to produce a certain unanimity in either of these two areas, but long discussions and rivers of ink, increasingly virtual and less printed. Such a thing happened, for example, with The hole (Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, 2019), much more accessible on the streaming of Netflix that, now and for the moment, a proposal like Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021), which has been awarded no less than the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
In case anyone could doubt it, such an award, the most prestigious in the world as famous are the Oscars in the seventh art, has only exacerbated the discussion about the film. And just look at it, maybe with the pure amazement painted on the face, to understand that there is.
Throwing balls out with Julia Ducournau
The truth is, according to current data from Rotten Tomatoes, a whopping eighty-six percent of critics support Julia Ducournau’s work on this eccentric thriller with ingredients of fantasy, terror even due to situations typical of the genre. So to say that does not deserve the jackpot at all of the French festival constitutes daring with a minority opinion; which we are going to expose here.
But not arguing that Titane It is the winning feature film in the Provence competition because it was directed by a woman, a straw man fallacy with which some forgive lives spurious motivations are invented for not accepting that other colleagues and artists have been seduced by a work they detest. The job of a film critic is to explain how a movie was made and, therefore, whether to stand up applause during the end credits, hang out, or save it; not thinking of yourself as a cheap psychologist or an apprentice trickster soothsayer and letting go of the first absurd prejudice that comes to mind.
The real problems of ‘Titane’
The Parisian Julia Ducournau managed to attract the attention of analysts and the public with her first film, Crude (2016), also awarded at Cannes and at the Sitges Festival; and there were already those who have been revealed as his narrative interests and the tough and careful style of its composition. Both audiovisual stories tell us, among other things, the fall of two young women into an abyss of horrible violence; and are weighed down by a great arbitrariness in the behavior of its protagonists, which ends up weighing too much for one to ignore it.
Because it is not enough to describe the characters by their behavior, but it must be duly justified. In the case of Titane, Vincent’s is entirely reasonable, and the valuable interpretation from Ditto Lindon (Welcome) is moving. Above all, because of what he forges with the Alexia of the almost new but very competent Agathe Rousselle (Loving), whose bloody tumbles are produced because the cables are crossed, period.
Also, maybe the opacity of his fantastic tale it would not squeak at us if it were not added to the other lack of satisfactory explanations. And to the fearful suspicion that the linear approach Julia Ducournau deprives the length of better possibilities, surprising twists and fertilizer of curiosity.
So in Titane we have benefits such as a grateful sequence shot, scenes set to music and in a suggestive slow motion and an emotional drama. But all of it darkens with the indefensible arbitrariness of the script. And, for thinking that he rubs shoulders with other tremendous winners of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, such as Barton Fink (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1991), The pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002) or Elephant (Gus van Sant, 2003), it gives us the silly laugh.