![]() Originally, Justine -and it’s probably a bit less so the case in Titane, but still maybe in a very ironic way-was named after the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la Vertu. She is portrayed by Garance Marillier, who’s like my little sister and my muse, someone I adore. I think this… is the foundation of everything. Is there any specific intent behind this repetition? Are you gesturing toward archetypes? The names Alexia, Justine, and Adrien recur in both Raw and Titane. Is there a story that I’m afraid to tell? Bah! If there is such a story-maybe there is, maybe they are already in all my films-I would make a film about it. What’s a story that you’re most afraid to tell, or that you don’t feel quite ready to tell yet? You’ve said that you find inspiration in nightmares. She starts feeling something that is beyond her, which is her desire for Vincent. Grace is really what happens in this moment for Alexia. ![]() For me, this scene is sensual and graceful. It all comes together at the level of desire in the slow-motion scene with Future Islands’ “Lighthouse” playing in the background when all the firemen are dancing together. However, the desire that she starts feeling for Vincent after she has decided to become Adrien is a trigger for her to start feeling human for the first time in her life. It remains a way for her to be not in touch with her own humanity. In the end, even though she has this special bond with her car, it remains a car. And somehow he doesn’t get scared by that. In the end, she doesn’t bite him, she bites herself. This is very foundational when they have sex in Raw, and very positive for me. She has someone with whom shares an unconditional love and desire beyond any gender or any form of sexuality, because they need each other. It’s the opposite of how it is constructed in the case of Justine in Raw. ![]() Alexia’s case, of course, has to do very much with a death drive. I think that is very much what I have portrayed in both my features. This gaze is biased in some way that has been socially constructed. For me, the gaze has a connotation of social construct, especially when you’re talking about the male gaze, but the female gaze as well. Can you tell me more about the role that desire-who feels it, who’s fueled by it, and who expresses it-plays in your work, especially in relation to the gaze? You’ve mentioned that in Titane you tried to subvert the male gaze that usually dominates how we see women’s bodies.Ībsolutely. Raw and Titane are both on it because they visually thrum and quiver with the desire emanating from their protagonists. I put together a list of the most sensuous and sensual movies. But at the same time, we all have our own singular experience of our bodies. My parents are empathetic people, and they have always told me that “each patient is different, each body is different.” I believe that as far as our own mortality is concerned, we are all equal. It has always been linked for me to a very human way of doing things. It’s something that is pretty common, I’ve found, with people whose parents are both doctors: You have this sense of your own mortality at a pretty early stage in life. I grew up hearing that, having medicine books at home, having magazines at home. At night they would talk about their jobs and their patients. What about the human body fascinates you the most? Was there a particular experience or memory that was formative in your attraction to the body? On behalf of Film Comment, Isabel Sandoval, director of Lingua Franca, chatted with Ducournau over Zoom about Titane and its fascination with bodies, desire, empathy, comedy, and more. An audacious and deeply vulnerable story about trauma, family, and the warped ways of love, Titane opened on October 1 after screening at this year’s New York Film Festival. The second half of the film traces this transformation in all its strange, disturbing beauty, as Alexia becomes increasingly close with Adrien’s father Vincent, a bereft fire chief played by Vincent Lindon in one of the year’s most affecting performances. Disguising herself as Adrien, a young man who has been missing for years, Alexia sets to work remaking her body and identity. The film follows a murderous, amoral, and pregnant mechanophile, Alexia (a Buster Keaton–like Agathe Rousselle), as she goes on the run following a gruesome mass killing. The first film directed by a woman to win a solo Palme d’Or in the history of Cannes, Julia Ducournau’s Titane folds a surprisingly moving, even tender story of redemption into one of the most thrillingly violent body horror dramas to grace screens in some time. This article, part of our coverage of NYFF59, appeared in the October 6 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing.
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