After the “underground” success of 2016’s Raw, Julia Ducournau’s second feature film (third, if you count her TV movie, Mange), Titane, has been met with even more acclaim. And yet, it is Raw that ultimately feels like the more original idea despite Titane being hailed as “gender-defying,” a commentary on “gender performance” and full-stop “unforgettable.” But what people are actually forgetting is that, were it not for David Cronenberg’s 1996 adaptation of the J. G. Ballard novel, Crash, there might not be a Titane.
Even before 2004’s Crash (directed by another Canadian, Paul Haggis) made the concept totally cheeseball, it was true that, yes, clearly these people (surprisingly in Toronto rather than L.A.) get off on crashing into things because it makes them feel alive. Better still, sexually charged.
For Titane’s Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), metal has been a running motif in her life ever since she was a young child, as that was when the titanium plate was put into her head after a severe car accident she caused by continuing to annoy the shit out of her father in the driver’s seat. The implementation of the plate to keep her brain intact or what have you seems to have only turned her increasingly antisocial. As well as being attracted even more to other metal objects, specifically cars (perhaps part of her feeding off the “orgasm” of that first crash, like one of the characters in Cronenberg’s narrative). Which is why we see that her “job” as an adult is writhing on top of one to the tune of The Kills’ “Doing It To Death.” In short, she’s not a stripper, so much as a very specific kind of dancer. And if this job truly does exist somewhere, please let a bitch know.
Her ardor for the vehicle she mounts and straddles would, again, be quite unique had Cronenberg’s film not already featured in its own first scene Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger) barely dressed as she exposes her tit to the cold, hard metal of a plane before an unidentified man caresses her from behind, leading his mouth to her ass while she presses her body more firmly up against the wing—as though truly more turned on by that than the salad tossing. Well-timed, to be sure, because her husband, James (James Spader), soon learns that he has a very specialized fetish relating to transportation as well. And it all starts after he accidentally crashes into another car while ending up on the wrong side of the road. In the driver’s seat is Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), whose husband launches headfirst into the windshield of the passenger side of James’ car. Yes, he ends up dead, while James incurs a severe leg injury and Helen remains largely unscathed. During the moment when he looks at her after the crash, she happens to remove her seatbelt in such a way as to expose one of her jugs to James. It is in this instant that something within him is activated, making him realize how “hot,” apparently, car crashes are. And just about anything else to do with vehicles, particularly fucking inside of them.
Alexia, granted, takes it to the next logical step that Dr. Robert Vaughan (Elias Koteas) probably would have after re-creating famous car crashes like James Dean’s and Jayne Mansfield’s grew stale. James and Helen both attend the reenactment of Dean’s car crash, where they quickly become Robert’s acolytes. And Robert is a man who believes very much in the “reshaping of the human body by modern technology”—just as Alexia seems to by way of her own fetish. One that prompts her to take it to a new height of “synergy” that Robert would have surely approved of when she allows herself to literally get fucked by a car. More surreal still, become impregnated by that car.
If that wasn’t stressful enough, Alexia also has the fuzz on her ass thanks to her penchant for killing people by stabbing them in the ear with one of her hair chopsticks (for every time she “tries” to enjoy foreplay with humans, she only ends up being repelled by them). Thus, the requisite “change identities” scene in the bathroom using only the crudest of tools to alter her appearance (sort of like Franka Potente in The Bourne Identity)—including bashing her nose into the sink and rendering herself into an androgynous-looking male. Of course, Alexia’s father seemed long aware of her diabolical tendencies, yet always kept his feelings to himself, perhaps fearing that his own daughter might kill him if he tried to out her as a depraved killer (lo and behold, she kills him and her mother anyway). And maybe that’s where Alexia’s desperate underlying search for a patriarch who will accept her fully comes into play. Whether she wants one or not, she gets it in the form of Vincent Legrand (Vincent Lindon), a fire captain who takes his “son” back to the station where he lives. For Alexia has decided to completely dispense with her old identity by homing in on a poster of a boy who went missing when he was seven, and would be about her age by now. It’s a scheme that obviously wouldn’t work if Vincent were not so willing to believe. So utterly lonely without this specific kind of bond in his life.
Maybe if James and Catherine Ballard had decided to have a child in Crash instead of turning to objectophilia to fill the void, their own loneliness would feel diminished (as we’re all assured constantly that a child is the most important thing a person can “do” with their lives). Alas, the emptiness of their existence—as well as modern existence overall—is accented frequently by Cronenberg’s shots of the freeways filled with cars just waiting to be fucked in or crashed (in fact, these are the types of shots noticeably lacking in Ducournau’s film). “Ontario: Yours to Discover” read the license plates that remind us we’re in Canada and not L.A., despite the similar-looking infrastructure. And what’s jarring about that is Canada is actually supposed to be one of the “better” places to live on this Earth. So, too, is its “parent,” France, for that matter. Yet each set of characters in both of these countries are clearly totally miserable. Just going to show that the American brand of neoliberalism that has seeped into every culture is doing more harm to this world than anyone appears to want to acknowledge. And part and parcel of that neoliberalism is “the vehicle.” No matter what we do now, it is damned to remain an indelible part of the world “culture” as a direct result of America’s taint of priorities and “ideals.” And no, Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan isn’t expected to eradicate the clout of the car anytime soon.
Thus, can it be any wonder that a pair of films like Crash and Titane exist? Our society has learned to sexualize objects so readily that it’s scarcely even aware of that fetishization (sometimes called capitalism). In Crash, Cronenberg often cuts from one sex scene to another (either from inside a car to a “normal setting” or vice versa). The intent is to jar us with just how eroticized this ilk can become from banging in a car, carrying that “hot and bothered”-ness well into the rest of their day. A type of objectophilia that Alexia one-ups by letting a car actually penetrate her. Obviously, the mechanics (no pun intended) of this sex act are very vague, making the pregnancy almost Virgin Mary-esque.
As we’ve moved into the twenty-first century, it seems that crashing alone is now no longer enough. The next best fetish is becoming “one” with the machine. Luckily for that brand of “transcendence,” the Western world has always worshipped cars, seen them as a symbol of status. That they’re only destined to fall further out of fashion if we truly make an environmental change is a reiteration of just how unsexy modern humanity has long been.
With regard to Titane being hailed as brilliant for its “gender-morphing” angle (another tie-in to how humans will evolve into a genderless state the more at one with technology they become), Cronenberg’s movie doesn’t lack for this either. In Crash, eventually, man, woman—it doesn’t matter—the only thing that does is the car. Being in the car, or seeing wreckage, or scars from being in a wreck. Gender is entirely secondary when it’s all boiled down, hence the sexual scene between Robert and James after the former gets a tattoo outlining his scars. The lack of concern for what gender someone is then transcends onto Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette) and Helen, who get turned on by each other as Helen opens the door to a wrecked car in a junkyard.
Crash, in contrast to Titane, is perhaps more “plotless.” A series of escalating events revealing that the more a fetish is fed, the more it needs to be—and with greater risks involved for the sake of topping the last adrenaline rush. Toward the finale of Crash, a billboard that reads Crazy for You looms above as James and Catherine act like they’re merely in bumper cars while barreling down the highway. In the final scene, James inhales the smoke and exhaust from the crash like it’s cocaine. And it is. For it’s the ultimate high. More seductive (and deadlier) than all the rest. And in those last moments, we almost wonder if Alexia wasn’t actually conceived by these two fetishists.
In any event, Titane being called “the wildest, sexiest movie of the year” is possibly a testament to just how much we’ve lost touch with what actually is wild and sexy. Because, if we’re being honest, Crash is still the more shocking and erotic film. But shit, when you get a half-human, half-machine baby involved, everyone gets blindsided enough to forget about the OG of this subject matter.
