Tuesday 19 October 2021

London Film Festival (LFF) 2021 #12 - Titane

Ah, we’ve hit one of those films where I’m tempted to post the whole review as just a single shrug emoji...

Titane
Dir. Julia Ducournau / Dur. 108 mins
Strand:- Special Presentation

In A Nutshell:-
Alexia, a young woman with a strange obsessive relationship with cars, finds herself on the run in a precarious situation after giving in to her murderous impulses…

The Good & The Bad:- 
I’d seen Ducournau’s previous film Raw and enjoyed that, so was looking forward to this but it's one of those films where I’m struggling to pick it apart. Let’s try and highlight some of it. Agathe Rousselle definitely holds the attention as the messed-up and desperate Alexia accompanied by Vincent Lindon as the fire chief who she finds herself sheltering with. There were some moments of bleak humour that did get a laugh out of me and there are some oddly touching moments to the realtionship between these two broken individuals. I think that the main issue for me that I had with the film was that I just didn't understand Alexia as a character and was at a loss as to what motivated her to do what she did at various points in the film other than the fact that she is murderous and, frequently, pretty stupid. It was also hard to suspend disbelief around the disguise she subjected herself to; given that this is a film that features some pretty out there fantasy-based sequences, it feels almost silly to say this but it did have an impact on the film for me (and I guess if I was focusing on this minor aspect, I wasn’t caught up enough in what was happening to see past that).


The Verdict:- I think what I can say about this is that it's not a film that I connected to or enjoyed. It just wasn’t one that worked for me, sadly.

No Q&A at this screening.





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