

Then we get to her and she gets out of the male gaze because she reclaims their desire, and she owns the car with the way she dances. I made it seem as though the cars and the girls are essentially the same at the start. That’s why we start with a sequence shot in a car show. So in this respect, Alexia’s character comes from my will to show that femininity is so much more flexible and blurry than what people think it is. I make movies because I’m me, not because I’m a woman. When people say I’m a woman director - I mean, that’s always a bit annoying, because I’m a person. I’m saying this for everybody: For me, as a woman, I don’t want my gender to define me at all. However, because that’s not yet something that’s socially understood, it becomes a topic. I think that gender is not really relevant for someone’s identity. For “Raw,” I was always talking in interviews about how I don’t like to put things in boxes. I see the world as it should be - fluid, and more fluid every day, in so many ways. It’s pretty natural for me to think like that. It’s one of the main themes of the film, but it’s not a theme that I had a plan for. Weirdly enough, gender fluidity is a topic and it is not a topic for me. More specifically, how did you map out your approach to gender fluidity? It creeps into the premise, since Alexia’s transformation isn’t so clear from the first act. I’ll take one picture that I put in another movie, like a fireman, and use it in this one. You have some small Easter eggs in my films, from “Junior” to “Raw” to “Titane,” some details in the sets that are the same and some costumes that are the same. It’s a new phenomenon every time, but I have tried to make it a continuous gesture. If you look at it from the outside, when you finish one, you move on to the other one. I can tell you that I do try to create affiliation between my films. How intentional has this progression been for you? Your short film “Junior” deals with a tomboy who becomes more traditionally feminine “Raw” is about a girl who becomes a woman now, “Titane” deals with gender in a more expansive non-binary way. “Titane” exists on a continuum with your other work. Memo to Distributors: Buy These 2023 Cannes MoviesĪ few days before her historic win, Ducournau sat down with IndieWire at the Cannes offices of Unifrance to discuss the themes of the movie, the extensive preparation that went into it, and how she’s evaluating opportunities as her career momentum continues to build. The ultimate movie-as-mic-drop experience, “Titane” left viewers speechless, but also gave them much to talk about, as it used its shocking, unpredictable ingredients to launch a complex exploration of gender fluidity unlike any seen before.
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Oh, she’s also a serial killer, and goes into hiding after her latest killing spree by posing as the long-lost son of a workaholic fireman (Vincent Lindon) with a steroid addiction. Brace yourself: Newcomer Agathe Rouselle plays Alexia, an erotic dancer with a sexual attraction to cars, one of which gets her pregnant. “Titane” follows Ducournau’s 2016 cannibal coming-of-age drama “Raw” with another provocative look at sexuality through the lens of genre.
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That outcome is all the more exciting in light of the movie in question. By the end of the festival, the arrival of the second feature from 37-year-old French director Julia Ducournau would find her becoming the second female director in history to win the Palme d’Or, after Jane Campion took the prize for “The Piano” way back in 1993. “Joaquin was pushing me further and going ‘No, let’s go further.’ This will be an NC-17 film.” Okay, but if they want to make this a true portrayal of ’30s gays, they should probably include a scene in which Phoenix freaks out after Bette Davis isn’t nominated for an Oscar for Of Human Bondage.The lineup for this year’s Cannes Film Festival was filled with unpredictability, but at least one certain outcome: “ Titane” would get people talking.

“The next film is a feature that’s an original script that I developed with Joaquin Phoenix based on some thoughts and ideas he brought to me … It’s a gay love story set in 1930s L.A.,” he said. In a conversation with IndieWire at Cannes, the movie’s director, Todd Haynes ( Carol), who is there promoting his film May December, described the current state of the upcoming project.

It’s TBD how much explicit gay sex that biopic will include (our guess: not a lot!), but Lady Gaga’s Joker: Folie à Deux co-star Joaquin Phoenix won’t be making that mistake. This fall, Bradley Cooper is starring in Maestro, a biopic about Leonard Bernstein, for example. There’s only so much hanging out with Lady Gaga one actor can do before ending up gay in a movie.
