Is it it feminist to fuck cars? As a film that shattered the glass sunroof of the horror industry, being only the second female-director film to win the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Julia Durcourneau’s film Titane (2021) is far from a comfortable watch. However, does pleasurable always mean to be comfortable and what does pleasure mean for the female form? Titane unconventionally tackles this inquiry by exploring the phenomenon of the exploitation of the female form, weaving a narrative of reclamation of bodily autonomy and gender fluidity through the deployment and subversion of male-gaze orientated thematic elements, paving a new path to female empowerment.
In a genre structured around subversion of typical film conventions, Titane furthers the exploration of the taboos of society, and even the horror genre itself, in a unique and shocking way. The film follows Alexia, a young woman who sustained a traumatic brain injury as a child and now has a metal plate implanted in her skull as a result of a car crash. As an adult, Alexia now works an exotic dancer at a car show convention. One night, to fight off an aggressive and unwanted advance from a patron of the convention, Alexia kills the man with her hairpin. Later that night, she enters the car warehouse and has “sex” with one of the show cars, her vintage Cadillac with flame decals. The next day. Alexia discovers she is pregnant, a child conceived between her and her car. Frightened, she lashes out, murdering several individuals at a house party. When a search for a local serial killer, who turns out to be Alexia, is broadcasted on the news, she attempts to escape the situation, burning her house down and locking her parents inside the home. To disguise herself, Alexia shaves her head, binds her chest and protruding, pregnant stomach, and smashes her face on a sink counter to break her nose. She takes on the identity of Adrien, the long lost son of a rural fire chief Vincent, a man addicted to steroid injections. Alexia/Adrien joins the small firefighter brigade and settles into her new life. As time passes, Alexia’s pregnancy becomes harder to conceal, resulting in Vincent eventually discovering her condition as she goes into labor. During the final moments of her labor, Alexia pushes and the titanium plate in her head splits open, killing her. The film ends with a reveal of the newborn, who is cradled in Vincent’s arms and covered in patches of titanium metal, an amalgamation of both human and machine.
Within Titane, there is overwhelming emphasis placed on cars and machinery, objectifying the vehicles in a similar manner as a woman’s body would be in a more traditional film setting. Durcourneau invites us to indulge in a male-gaze voyeurism when viewing these cars, thinking and feeling in harmony with Alexia. The audience’s first impression of the protagonist as an adult and after her car crash, is her scantily clad, dancing on her flamed car, with a large group of male spectators. Yet, there is indeed something very empowering about Alexia’s behavioral methodology. The dance is between her and the car only, metaphorically a form of foreplay. The men, and therefore, us as the viewers are only able to watch, met with her “total and dead-eyed indifference” (Bacholle 21). She is not interested in the men in the way they are interested in her.
The horror genre is built from the pain and exploitation of the female body, with the traditional slashers garnering praise for their realistic butcherings of young girls or the tropes of the “slut” or mean girl always dying first, Titane refuses these exhausted film elements. Alexia exists outside of pleasure and appeal that is not her own, embracing her imperfections and unconventionality and rejecting the idea that she must be able to attract male attention, that “a woman is as good as she looks” (Bacholle 20). When Alexia has sex with the car, she enters it, simulating penetration with her as the penetrator and holding the accompanying power of that role. This creates a juxtaposition between the female body and cars and how those are both typically viewed through a male gaze as possessions, or checkmarks of a successful, masculine life. In Titane, having sex with the car allows Alexia to reclaim and possess the vehicles in her own way through indulgent sexual liberation, a taboo for women to experience.
Her bodily transformations, both when she takes on the identity of Adrien and throughout her pregnancy, serve as non-gratuitous. The viewers rarely see the pregnancy, except in the brief moments of vulnerable strife that Alexia experiences when grappling with the gravity of her situation. In fact, her transformations are both violent, with her changing her physical appearance to become Adrien by compressing her chest and pregnant stomach. She repeats this action to the point that raw wear marks appear on her skin and the skin of her belly splits, revealing a smooth metal underneath, much like the plate in her head. During her labor, the metal in her stomach and head and skin rippled during her pregnancy. In a narrative structured around traditional topics that are key aspect of the masculine identity, cars and sex, this exploration of “bodily vulnerability” (Paszkiewicz 934) by Durcourneau, car crashes and the relationship between gendered automobility, desire, and death” (Paszkiewicz 934) through an unpleasurable, yet simultaneously erotic lens.
Although Alexia’s adoption of the identity of Adrien is an expression of her relationship to her own gender, the concept of gender fluidity within Titane is not isolated to the protagonist. In fact, several characters challenge our stereotypes of gender. Dr. Micheal Eden describes the confines of the traditional female identity to be “stereotypically bourgeois, limiting tropes that women may need to reject to be emancipated” (Eden 212), just as Alexia does when she becomes Adrien, and is, thus, reborn outside a world subjected to the traditional male gaze. Our first impression of Vincent, a man presented to be strong, untouchable, and formidable, is him crying when he reconnects with what he believes to be his long lost son.
Additionally, when the audience is introduced to the firefighters, it is not during a heroic event of them rescuing someone from a burning structure, it is from all of them performing a rather domestic task, cooking together in a kitchen, and later, having a dance party while bathed in pink light. The firefighters themselves do not fall into the strict category of traditional masculinity, which create further layers of subversion within the structure and expression of gender in Titane. Alexia/Adrien was accepted relatively quickly by the firefighters, despite his lack of traditionally masculine behaviors, which brings Alexia/Adrien a sense of comfort. Previously, Alexia/Adrien acted significantly more recklessly and violently while still identifying as Alexia, yet now is able to find freedom through the identity of Adrien and the safety of her new life as she adopts a more masculine presence during her pregnancy.
However, in retaliation to the themes of Titane, one could argue that there is no inherent or assigned “gender” to interests involving cars, sex, and bodily autonomy. Although this is technically true, there is certainly a specific association regarding gender and topics such as cars, promiscuity, and emotional expression. In regular society, there is a specific ideal for men and women, and anyone who exists as an outlier of these strict stereotypes is othered. Men must be strong and confident, to cry or express vulnerability, such as in the ways Vincent does, is seen as weak. Women must be beautiful and mild-mannered, to exhibit behaviors and purposefully disfigure herself, Alexia combats the pressure of this expectation. This type of deviation from the prescriptions of gender normalities causes alienation of individuals within society, but is approached differently within Titane. The film treats all sorts of subversive behaviors as commonplace occurrences for the main characters, challenging our ideas of bodily autonomy and expression, which is important and impactful in relation to the assimilative ideologies of society regarding appropriate or abnormal behavior.
As a body of work, Titane encourages its viewers to challenge their own pre-conceived conventions regarding expression of femininity and gender and how that can relate to the world around them. This exposure to uncomfortable themes is innovative and enables individuals to n become more accustomed to engaging with the representation of the taboo, be it gore, sex, or intercourse with a vehicle, and its relation to the human identity and intersects with the viewer’s own relationship to themselves. The acceptance of this uncomfortable notion is the real struggle, but allows audiences to reclaim autonomy over themselves and their mindset in regards to the space that their own body holds and the pleasure it experiences.
For those interested, Titane (2021) is free to watch on the streaming service Tubi (also free and does not require an account, just has some ads)!
Bibliography:
Bacholle, Michèle. “In The Defense of Punks and Monsters: Julia Ducournau and Titane.” The French Review, vol. 97, no. 2, Dec. 2023, pp. 19–33, https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a914212.
Michèle Bacholle is an experienced and prolific French writer and expert regarding Francophone women’s literature. She is currently a professor of French studies within the World Language and Cultures department at Eastern Connecticut State University. Within this work, Bacholle explores the challenging nature of the French film Titane (2021), directed by Julia Durcournau and only the second film ever to win the Palme d’Or of the Cannes Film Festival. The film itself explores the restrictive prescriptions of femininity through the main character, Alexia. Bacholle argues that the film rejects the sentiment that “a woman is only as good as she looks” through Alexia’s presentation of self being fluid across predetermined gender binaries and that Durcourneau explores the taboos of expression through the creation of Alexia as an abnormal being, a monster in her world. Personally, I found this essay to be very evocative and thorough when discussing the film’s themes. I found this article to be the right amount of challenge throughout my reading; not too dense and difficult to interpret, but still presented ideas and concepts that challenged and encouraged me to reframe my thinking. When thinking about previous viewings, as well as when rewatching the film an additional time after reading this essay, it was very easy to identify the presence of themes presented by Bacholle. Its credibility in regards to the topic was increased due to Bacholle’s expertise in the areas of feminist works and French cinema.
Eden, Michael. “The Armoured Self, Un-Becoming The Subject: Reading Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021) via Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism.” Modernist Cultures, vol. 19, no. 2–3, Aug. 2024, pp. 208–235, https://doi.org/10.3366/mod.2024.0428.
Dr. Michael Eden is a researcher, writer, visual artist, and professor at the University of London. He is a well-known and high regarded researcher, with notable special interests in monstrosity and subjectivity within narrative. He also possesses an extensive research background in topics such as modernism, notions of the creation of myths, and monster studies. Within this essay, Eden discusses the film Titane (2021) and its usage of machinery and vehicles, specifically cars, as representations of femininity, womanhood, and the accompanying objectification of this specific identity. Much like other sources, Eden ties the themes of the film to themes of monstrosity in comparison to the status-quo of one’s environment and prescribed gender roles, but pushes the notion further with his examination of Alexia, the main character, as a biomechanical entity and the director’s, Julia Durcourneau, response to to an age of increased convenience and objectification for the sake of industrialization. Additionally, Eden connects this work to that of Wyndham Lewis, a writer credited with assisting in the creation of the Vorticist movement. Overall, I did not find this article to be a particularly challenging read, but did run into a few instances where I was required to do some additional research on topics or concepts that I was previously unfamiliar with, such as Vorticism.
Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna. “‘I’m in Love With My Car’: Revisiting The Aesthetics of Petroleum in Crash (1996), Death Proof (2007), and Titane (2021).” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 41, no. 7, 22 Feb. 2023, pp. 932–972, https://doi.org/10.1080/10509208.2023.2176116.
Dr. Katarzyna Paszkiewicz is a Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of the Balearic Islands, as well as a researcher in the ADHUC Research Center for Theory, Gender Sexuality at the University of Barcelona. She has completed several research program stays across the world, with her primary focus being in film and cultural studies, specifically from the US and UK perspectives. This source discusses three films, Crash (1996), Death Proof (2007), and Titane (2021), and their various overlapping and different thematic elements and plots. I paid specific interest to the discussion regarding Titane, for which Paszkiewicz focused on the allure of the immobile vehicle this film uniquely possesses, as well as topics of unregulated desire and fulfillment of intimate urges as displayed by Alexia. I found this source to be a very interesting and illuminating look into the intimacy of industrialization, and how it romanticized to the point of fetishization within modern media. I have watched many films that idealize the idea of a rapid advancement, either through a historical or dystopian, or about the speed of a car, but I find the discussion of the power and sensuality of an unmoving car to be a very interesting idea to explore.
“Titane.” Koch Media, 2021, Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.