Titane, it’s French for “Titanium,” which is the sort of plate the lead character (Alexia) has fused to her skull. Neat, right? We’re learning things today! Stick with us, in no time you’ll be able to order a titanium plate on your skull in Montreal, all by yourself!
It’s a French movie, so you’ll need to know how to read. Sorry. Alexia gets in a car bonk as a child and has a titani… well I’m sure you know what I’m… her skull, yes. A titanium plate on her skull. Then she grows up and gets a job at a place where sexy ladies dance on cars and then afterward men come up and ask for their autographs. The French, am I right?
How the fuck would I know, I’ve never been to France.
Pretty dope job, really, if you want to dance in a garage for a living. She’s 32 and still lives at home with her parents, so I guess higher ambitions are not really her thing. After work, she goes to her other job, where she burps grown men with baby food hiccups, and then they spit up baby food all over her shoulder. Babies. Am I right?
How the fuck would I know, I’ve never seen a baby.
Also, cars come alive around her, and then she has sex with them. She has sex with them and they make her pregnant. Cars, am I right?
…they’re kinda bad like that.
Also also, Alexia is a serial killer. Yeah, there are some layers to this fucked-up onion! A serial killer who masquerades as a fire chief’s missing son. His missing pregnant son. Alexia is still pregnant with a baby Chrysler. So now she’s a firefighter too. A boy firefighter who is actually a girl serial killer pregnant with a baby Chrysler. They go out, fight fires, then head back to the station house where all the men smoke cigarettes and dance together with all their arms in the air. Everyone dancing. It’s like a weird French man-prom.
Then she has to wreck the vibe by dancing all sexy-like. First time I’ve ever seen a room full of French firemen dancing to hardcore techno together then getting turned OFF by a lady dancing all sexy. Weird room. They were finally starting to accept her-him (“hem?” I don’t think it counts and non-binary-fluid-etc if she’s just using gender to avoid the death penalty), then put her-him up on a truck and are like “Yeah, bro! Do it be a badass techno dancer or crowd surf or something else hyper-macho in a room full of men dancing together with their shirts off!” and she might as well have just started singing “Happy birthday Mista Pwesident!” for all the good it did her.
The movie is a lot, and by the end I was a little tired, but Mido didn’t seem phased. It’s like she was shaking her little gray head and thinking “Humans. Am I right?”
Made by the same filmmaker responsible for “Raw,” Titane is pretty inhuman and human at the same time. Heartless and loving, simultaneously. And pretty gross, too. A healthy amount of gross body horror stuff. I’m sure it all means something deeply profound about the human condition and I’m sure some Eurotrash or another would like to explain it to me while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, slowly and with small words like I’m some dumb American man-infant who doesn’t understand the finer points of haute cinéma, but I don’t care. I don’t feel like looking for deep meaningfuls today, I just wanted to see some chick dress up like a pregnant fireman dance in front of a room full of definitely-not-gay firemen while her nipples ooze motor oil.
I give it shit, but it is a good movie.