seen from China
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seen from United States
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from China
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seen from Australia
seen from United States
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seen from United States
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decreation : how women like sappho, marguerite porete and simone weil tell god by anne carson + horror women
midsommar (dir. ari aster), crimson peak (dir. guillermo del toro), rosemary's baby (dir. redacted), grave (dir. julia ducourneau), jennifer's body (dir. karyn kusama), the vvitch (dir. robert eggers)
Titane (2021)
This is the gayest fire department ever to hate twinks. All of these muscle-bound lads are 110% fucking each other, writhing against one another in violet light when they aren’t preparing breakfast together under the observation of their deeply closeted captain. And yet the second the weird new recruit starts twerking on top of a ladder truck, naw, they’re all gonna get back to work. Gender identity and sexuality by and large are interrogated in Julia Ducorneau’s masterful transgression-piece, institutions broken down on an elemental level. Fleeing her past, Alexia adopts the identity of long-missing boy Adrien, insinuating herself into the life of a down-and-out fire chief. The usual plot-beats ensue as Alexia struggles to conceal both her identity and her auto-pregnancy, yet it could be seen that Vincent knows she’s lying from the start and still takes her in out of loneliness. Alexia brutalizes herself to conceal her biological femininity, binding her breasts and belly even as it pains her, just as Vincent injects himself to fuel his addiction and strive to recapture his classical masculinity. He’s a firefighter, strong of body and calm of mind, yet he’s known nothing but failure in recent times. Alexia flirts with maternal instinct and tries not to be discovered, her maternity-dress moment passed off as a moment stolen from a photograph by Vincent. It’s a world that is paradoxically obsessed with sex and yet is sexless. Attempts at intimacy are met with violence, or are violations. In contrast, car shows are the supreme displays of eroticism. Alexia, the victim of a car crash due to her own belligerency, writhes against the frame of a car which later impregnates her, and she’s viewed as a sex-symbol, men lusting after her and longing for an autograph.
Ducourneau here dallies in the guilty pleasures of New French Extremity, but in its closing acts imbues the film with an essential humanity which justifies its existence. Alexia fucks a car in the opening moments, and murders a sequence of people. It’s jarring and shocking. Yet the murders become almost comical in how she realizes just how many she has to kill to close the information loop, and the sex scene is played out as cheap hentai, almost. The impacts are real, but the style undermines the edginess of it all, demanding more of the story. As the story develops, it becomes less interested in who Alexia can stab with her hairpin and more engaged with how she can find a resolution with her adoptive father figure. Titane trucks in the vocabulary of bruised bodies and the horrors of the human body. But it has an emotional core, of a sort, which other films of this branch lack. Alexia and Vincent are both fundamentally damaged people, and yet they manage to find some sort of connective tissue together. The film begins fixated with the confluence of flesh and metal. Alexia fucks a car, then Fucks a car. She intermingles with a woman who has nipple piercings. But after she passes, she delivers a child which is metal incarnate. Cronenberg’s new flesh in an auto-modern sense.
THE RULES
SIP
Alexia’s hairpin is put to use.
Body-binding.
Ass injections.
Any time you have to cringe away from looking at the screen.
BIG DRINK
Alexia gives an autograph.
A missing persons case is mentioned.
An English language song plays.
Hair-cutting.
Not to be a hater but this is so funny. Ducourneau’s body horror (including Raw which i just finished watching) is some of the cleanest, non-gratuitous gore ive ever seen, and im normally pretty squeamish…TIFF watchers wimpy af
Cannes Palme d’Or goes to female director for only the second time
Cannes Palme d’Or goes to female director for only the second time
Julia Ducournau’s serial killer film Titane scoops top award, while best actor and actress go to Caleb Landry Jones and Renate Reinsve – – Le journal du peintre Painting news project Les tableaux du peintre Twitter – – – – – Le journal du peintre Painting news project Les tableaux du peintre Twitter – – – – – – – – – –
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