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France, Belgium · 2021
1h 48m
Director Julia Ducournau
Starring Vincent Lindon, Agathe Rousselle, Garance Marillier, Laïs Salameh
Genre Drama, Horror, Thriller
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After a near-fatal car crash, Alexia is left with mechanophilia and a titanium plate in her head. But that’s not all — she also develops a penchant for murder. She learns the hard way that her fetish has unexpected consequences in this highly visual and violent film.
Ducournau’s follow-up to “Raw” is more than comfortable in its genre trappings, offering grab bag nods to past masters and positively delighting in sex, violence and grisly prosthetics as it chants “Long live the new flesh” from the film world’s toniest perch, inviting all gathered to join along.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
While Titane wants to shock and surprise — two things a lot of contemporary films seem to have forgotten how to do — it also wants to tell the strangely affecting story of two royally f***ed up human beings who, despite all the odds, and lack of shared DNA, share a father-son like bond.
Whatever you’re willing to take from it, there’s no denying that Titane is the work of a demented visionary in full command of her wild mind; a shimmering aria of fire and metal that introduces itself as the psychopathic lovechild of David Cronenberg’s “Crash” and Shinya Tsukamoto’s “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” before shapeshifting into a modern fable about how badly people just need someone to take care of them and vice-versa.
Titane is bold in its reference points, no-holds-barred in its approach to some of the hottest-button issues of the day, and brash – and often very funny – in its deliciously grisly and inventive image-making.
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
By the time we reach an apocalyptic payoff, Titane has skated on and off the rails several times, with insouciant abandon. You miss the combination of bravado and control that made Raw work so well, but the deranged cocktail of outrage, excess, conceptual ferocity and sheer silliness on display here will make you gasp – and occasionally flinch.
With Titane, audiences occasionally just have to give themselves over to the movie’s demented momentum, taking whatever perverse pleasure they can from Ducournau’s willingness to push the boundaries
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
Titane is the kind of film that makes quibbles over plausibility seem foolish: you just have to sit back and enjoy being ridden over, or at least accept that’s what the exercise is about.
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This is, to put it mildly, a ghastly film, one that rapes the sensibilities without nourishing the values. It is an insult to the actors, the views and, above everything else it proves Ambrose Bierce’s comment that “Eccentricity is a method of distinction so shallow that only fools use it to demonstrate their incapacity.” Stunning in its ineptness, its clumsiness, and in its fat headed nothingness.
The violence in this movie is sometimes too much, especially towards the beginning. However, when you get past that, Titane is unique and strangely moving. The story is surreal, but the movie has real empathy for its characters. I had truly never seen anything like it, which was exhilarating. It's also beautifully shot, very well acted, and has some great musical choices.