Due to the will power needed to resist the urge of walk out during the first thirty minutes, viewing Titane is a demanding experience. The choice of remaining seated however is rewarded by a more afffordable continuation, and the final impression left by the film is in all cases that it was an unique experience, even if not entirely enjoyable.
It would be tempting to deem the film an inherently incoherent mscallaneous of events. Truthfully, the film resists to be abscribed to any genre - body horror, thriller, even dark comedy - it rather borrows elements from all of these. The best way to interpret Titane is as a surreal film, with atmospheric similarities to Leos Carax or Nicholas Winding Refn, with which it shares the pleasure for divisive sequences.
Although surrealism does not demand any thematisation or coherent storytelling, Titane does in fact have a coherent theme. A good way to describe the film is as a gender and sexuality bending fantasy focused on a woman that penetrates a masculine world. The varied events provide a series of supernatural metaphors to various states of womanhood, unwanted pregnancy, inter-familial apathy, fetishisation, missed fatherhood.
It is not unconceivable that this film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Nonetheless, it is a dense, challenging viewing experience, definitely not a film that everyone can equally appreciate.
(Excerpt from my full review on comeandreview)
It would be tempting to deem the film an inherently incoherent mscallaneous of events. Truthfully, the film resists to be abscribed to any genre - body horror, thriller, even dark comedy - it rather borrows elements from all of these. The best way to interpret Titane is as a surreal film, with atmospheric similarities to Leos Carax or Nicholas Winding Refn, with which it shares the pleasure for divisive sequences.
Although surrealism does not demand any thematisation or coherent storytelling, Titane does in fact have a coherent theme. A good way to describe the film is as a gender and sexuality bending fantasy focused on a woman that penetrates a masculine world. The varied events provide a series of supernatural metaphors to various states of womanhood, unwanted pregnancy, inter-familial apathy, fetishisation, missed fatherhood.
It is not unconceivable that this film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Nonetheless, it is a dense, challenging viewing experience, definitely not a film that everyone can equally appreciate.
(Excerpt from my full review on comeandreview)