Titanebegins not with a whimper but a cacophony: a deafening engine rev; the crash as car meets concrete; then the image of a girl in a horrific head-brace, like something from a Saw film, as she gets fitted with a titanium plate. Next a temporal leap to a car show, erotic dancers, pulsating synth music, chrome, and neon. The girl from the crash appears from the milieu, now a serial killer and sex worker. After the show, a stalker follows her to her car and gets a needle the size of a chopstick lodged in his eardrum. His mouth sputters like a piece of faulty machinery. Scarcely 10 minutes have passed.
Julia Ducournau, a Parisian whose debut Raw became the breakout success of the Critics’ Week sidebar at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, returns to the South of France last week in Competition—a sharp ascendency—and it has been nothing short of sensational. An experience as invigorating as a pair of jumper cables, it premiered halfway through the second week as late-fest fatigue was descending on the Croissette and seemed to almost singlehandedly wake the festival back up—enough at least to capture the eyes and imagination of Spike Lee’s Jury who have awarded it the Palme d’Or; a truly shocking, punky choice that made Ducournau only the second woman in history to collect that award.
hey i’m coming back real quick just to say that I am so happy that Julia Ducournau won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival I have never seen a film like Titane before I can’t stop thinking about it anyway this is just a small post to say that I love cinema and I love women even more
Julia Ducournau makes history by winning the Palme d’or for Titane.
She follows Bodil Ipsen who won in 1946 for The Red Meadows, which she co-directed with Lau Lauritzen Jr. the year all films In Competition at Cannes were jointly awarded the Palme d’or.
Jane Campion, the only other woman director winner, tied for the Palme d’or in 1993 with her film The Piano.
What’s So Great About That: Episode 22 From Zombies to Cannibals: Finding Humanity in ‘Raw’
Zombies have always interrogated our humanity, but flesh-eating is no longer about the dead but the living, and Julia Ducournau’s Raw suggests that it speaks to something more human than monster. As a mortician tells a detective in the Mexican film ‘We Are What We Are’: “It’s shocking how many people eat other in this city.”
Cannibalism is part of humanity. Some tribes do it ritually and have no shame doing it. You have this feeling when you bite someone’s arm for fun, that you want to go a bit further, but you don’t because you have a moral canvas. This thing is in us, we just don’t want to see it. So I thought, since my characters always feel like monsters deep inside, I wanted the audience to feel like a monster as well, and to understand what she’s doing. Because we are all monsters, really.
This character who wants to fit in but realizes she can’t fit this particular box, no matter what … well, what do we do with her? Should she stop existing? I believe that monstrosities are what make us unique. If she realizes she could kill someone but she won’t, then she can be her own wild animal. That’s a positive thing – to pinpoint who you are once you’ve been confronted by your first real moral choice in your life. Most people never get to that stage … She’s maybe more human than any of us at the end of the movie.
