December 2021 — Feature
Film
THE SKINNY
Love on Fire Julia Ducournau, the director of cult horror Raw, explores the boundaries of sexuality and genre with her uninhibited new film Titane. We speak to Ducournau and Titane's game-for-anything star, Agathe Rousselle, about this brutal film’s tender core Interview: Xuanlin Tham — 50 —
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girl with a titanium plate in her skull. Dancers pressing themselves against the bodies of automobiles, metal and flesh drenched seductively in neon light. An erotic collision between woman and car. A match to petrol as the final flourish to a killing spree. This is the world of Julia Ducournau’s Titane: the flamelicked, battered and beautiful work of a filmmaker deeply invested in mythmaking. “I like to create my own world,” writer-director Ducournau explains, “so it’s logical for me to try and create a form of mythology within my film. My characters start as archetypes – archetypes I’m going to try to deconstruct.” She drew inspiration from the biggest stories of all – creation myths. “I thought a lot about the story of Gaia and Uranus, where the gods of the Earth and the sky, by mating, gave birth to the Titans.” Ducournau weaves a tale where humanity is violent and monstrous, but also resilient: “[Gaia and Uranus] repopulate the earth with something that stands for strength somehow. Hence the title of my film – ‘titane’ means titanium, but it’s also a feminine way to put the word ‘titan.’”
