Let's imagine that every time an audience member gags, writhes in their seat or covers their eyes is a single note.
If you're not in the mood a cheesy comedy would be the score to your ringtone.
A gory slasher flick would make a pop song.
This movie is a goddamn opera, and I am unashamed to say that I was played like a fiddle.
Titane is just as as confronting as you've been told it is. A lot of people will not like this film, and it's not a film that you can force yourself to like.
However it is impossible to not admire the sheer audacity of Julia Ducournau in seeing it through to the end. It has taken a truly Herculean effort from the director, cast and crew to make a film like this work as well as it does, to manage the shifts between utter revulsion to concern for the truly twisted characters put before us. A lot of Titane is genuinely repugnant, and just when you think the next broken taboo will be the last, well, the film keeps going. But despite the one-upmanship, somehow, somehow, Titane doesn't drive head-on into an apathetic, "well I guess this is happening now" pileup. There is never a point in this film where you become numb to the next shock. Ducournau, like a skilled torturer, lets her victims come up for air, gives them a glimpse of lightness and levity, a beam of sunshine... then smiles when you realise you're looking at the headlights of an oncoming car.
That's the wonder of Titane for me. It should be a film so absurd that you stop caring. But you never do. Up until the end I found myself disgusted and moved in equal measure. It is a testament to the impressive work of a lot of talented people, and whether you leave the theatre in awe or ready to take a long shower it's impossible to deny the strength of Titane as a raw, passionate work of art. So to the squeamish and stony hearted alike, here at long last is a movie that will make you equal.
As for me, I might need some of those cheesy comedies before I'm ready to face this beast of a film again.