Julia Ducournau's Palme d'Or-winning film 'Titane' explores themes of machinery, violence, and identity

Julia Ducournau's 2021 film 'Titane,' which won the Palme d'Or, centers on Alexia, a dancer who performs on customized cars at underground events. After a violent encounter where she kills a fan with a hairpin, Alexia has sexual relations with a Cadillac, becomes pregnant, and begins leaking motor oil. She then disguises herself as a missing teenage boy named Adrien Legrand, binding her pregnant stomach and breasts while remaining mute. Vincent, Adrien's father and a firefighter, collects Alexia from the police station, entering into a delusion about her identity. The film explores Alexia's sexual alienation and objectum-sexuality, potentially linked to titanium plates implanted in her skull after a childhood car accident. Ducournau's earlier feature 'Raw' (2016) also featured a young female protagonist driven to kill, though with a more primal, animalistic style compared to 'Titane's' mechanical themes. The narrative shifts from serial-killer elements to focus on the relationship between Vincent and Alexia, touching on themes of unfulfilled desire and identity. 'Titane' has been discussed alongside other 'elevated horror' films like Ari Aster's 'Hereditary' (2018), David Bruckner's 'The Night House' (2020), and Jennifer Kent's 'The Babadook' (2014), which address trauma, grief, and mental illness. The film avoids explicit allegory, instead provoking debate through its unsettling imagery and ambiguous character motivations.