I do believe that the female body is very much a topic in our society since the dawn of time, and I want to get rid of that. For me it’s a way of really trying to portray the female body as being universal. However, in both you have a lot of intimate scenes, of characters showering, or just in bed, and being in discomfort. That would be the only intentional step aside that I do as far as female bodies are concerned, because here it was a matter of killing the male gaze in the shot. Obviously there is a trick in the car show where I try to mimic the female gaze the way she moves on the car, with the car, and the way she reclaims her desire there, you know? She looks at you through the camera so that you’re not looking at her, she’s looking at you. JD: The way I want to film female bodies is trying to avoid any form of representations. It reminds me of a quote from Fleabag which I think about a lot, which is “women are born with pain built in.” Does this play into your focus on filming and exploring female bodies in particular? HH: You’ve said that when women make horror films, it’s often more about a horror from the inside, and more to do with identity. She retaliates in a situation where basically I think none of us would have retaliated, or not in that way, because obviously you’re always petrified by what’s happening. So when she gets out of this, to me it’s logical that people, especially men, see her as a designated target – we don’t know anything about her yet. But she still remains in a very specific context that is objectifying to women. She’s just come out of this car show where all the women are being objectified, and she tried, through her dancing and looks to the camera, to reverse the narrative not to be objectified by everyone else. But you’re right that for the first time she expresses violence, with the guy who basically stalks her, it’s a retaliation of sexual assault. Knowing that she has life inside of her creates a derailing. When she learns that she’s pregnant, this is so antagonistic to her. She is repulsed by humanity – her own and humanity in general – and she’d rather have intimate intercourse with a car, something that is metal and does not react, rather than being in contact with flesh and with humans. Julia Ducournau: I think what links both scenes, and what I’ve always had in my head, is that Alexia’s reason for being violent was when someone was getting too close. Was the intention here to portray Alexia as completely ruthless, to break down the expectations we may have of her character? The next time she is violent, it seems much more random. Hannah Holway: The first time we see Alexia being violent, it’s ‘justified’ almost through the fact it seems retributive it’s a reaction to someone harming her. A full-throttle thriller centred around Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a showgirl-assassin with a titanium plate fitted in her skull due to a childhood accident, Titane may feature car fucking, serial killing and a spontaneous nose-breaking, but scratch at the layers Ducournau references, and there lies a story of love, loneliness, and identity. It’s a term she actively rejects, preferring instead to see her films as studies in humanity, its often ugly complexities, and the ways in which we contort ourselves as we search for intimacy and connection. Since then, Ducournau has carved a space for herself within a recent wave of women-directed horror films, from 2017’s Revenge to 2021’s Censor, which move beyond the oft-exploitative confines of the Final Girl trope to centre complicated, ‘monstrous’ women and their stories.īoth Raw and the director’s Palme D’or-winning latest, Titane, can be viewed as portraits of female sexuality, darkly comic horror stories, and boundary-pushing coming-of-age tales but don’t call Julia Ducournau a provocateur. When French writer-director Julia Ducournau’s debut feature film, Raw, was released in 2017, reports of extreme bodily reactions (fainting, vomiting) at screenings almost overshadowed the subversive, shocking and relatable power of her cannibal-body-horror.
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