Saw Titane yesterday at NYFF (along with The Lost Daughter & Red Rocket) and it's practically all I've been thinking about since. I truly haven't seen something that equally grotesque and tender. A phenomenal and entrancing piece of work that's gonna be stuck in my head for quite a while.
It faded for a bit down the stretch, when it seemed to articulate its themes too explicitly and sentimentally. But god that second act is so beautiful, isn't it? Vincent Lindon just killed me in this.
That one I haven't seen. I work of Chicago and didn't not go to Cannes. Excited for it, though. Never met a Sean Baker movie I didn't like. (Fun-ish fact: I was one paragraph into my review of TANGERINE when the plug was pulled on The Dissolve.)
You've heard correctly. Red Rocket is great, oddly similar to Titane in that there are very uncomfortable moments to sit through (for wildly different reasons). I would hope that a Best Actor campaign for Simon Rex is happening, cause it's well deserved.
Also, Red Rocket starts by blaring NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" and as a child of the late 90s/early 2000s who grew up with a liking for boy-band pop, it pulled me in quicker than most movies do these days. But that's just a personal thing haha.
Me want to see Titane as, me not sure whether it best movie of year or even good movie, but it certainly most interesting. But me also not can help but think of that movie where Cameron Diaz fucks car and wonder whether every decade now gets car-fucking movie that speaks to its era. And if so, what were previous decades' car-fucking movies? Was Herbie: Fully Loaded dirtier than me realized?
Our friend Charles Bramesco hosted a Titane screening in New York this week and asked her about the Diaz scene. She said she had not seen The Counselor but intended to do so when she got back to France. Very different scenes. Not sure which one is crazier.
Just based on this and other review me have read, Titane's at least seem to have thematic resonance, as outlandish as movie's themes are. Me will admit me not have seen Counselor, but it felt lot more like that was purely for shock value.
OMG, no, you have to see THE COUNSELOR. It succeeded in frustrating the hell out of audiences because Cormac McCarthy's script is so pure--full of colorful language and philosophy. It's really something else, quite beyond what Diaz does with the car.
As a counterpoint, I saw The Counselor this year and hated it so much that it made me question if any of Cormac McCarthy's books were actually good in the first place (having read them all a decade ago).
It's pretty wild that a movie with this much fan service came from a TV show that was determined to not give the audience what they want. I'm thinking of the ending, of course, but also other times like the episode where Melfi contemplates unleashing Tony on the man who assaulted her before chiding the audience directly by saying "No!" into the camera.
I wonder if the lack of commercial success with NOT FADE AWAY, and the long gestating A RIBBON OF DREAMS falling through pushed Chase to do this for commercial reasons rather than a genuine desire to return to this world.
Matthew Weiner's post MAD MEN career has followed a similar arc with THE ROMANOFFS being mildly received with critics and audiences*, and his novel not really setting the world on fire. Maybe we will see a similar prequel/sequel project returning to those characters in future.
*It's hard to tell with streaming not publishing ratings, but when was the last time you heard anything about this show?
All points valid. I had actually started writing a graf about Chase's ambivalent relationship to his own show, and his discomfort over "fans" who came for the whackings and seemed endlessly generous in extending sympathy to Tony. I feel like those feelings are nakedly apparent in the prequel, which acquiesces to a story Chase probably doesn't want to tell while pursuing one angle (racial division in Newark, basically) that he did. It's a bummer, though, after a film as good as NOT FADE AWAY. You really miss his direction, too.
I just came back from watching Titane. I wasn't expecting a moving tale that Mary Shelley and her father, the writer and social critic, William Godwin would appreciate (and probably mom, MW, too). It's so important how we, especially fathers, raise our children. The charcterization by inference was written very well. Visually spectacular filmmaking. This my first movie by this director. She took wildly different plot and tonal elements and somehow made them not simply cohere, but be beautiful underneath the outrageousness, while telling a riveting story that is about something important for all societies. The two leads were brilliant. Grade: A
Zareh, you should definitely go back and check out RAW. There's a reason why this movie w as so hotly anticipated. One question for you (and again, a SPOILER alert here for those who want to go in cold: How do you think the film handled the serial killer angle? We witness this moment when she's taking the upper hand in what may have developed into a sexual assault, and we also see a subsequent scene where she responds to a set of circumstances through deadly violence. But the fact that she had killed before seems like kind-of-a-big-deal, no? And sort of unaddressed? (That said, I really loved her relationship with Lindon. That's when the film really came to life for me.)
(I decided using my real name and face might not be so wise online.)
Big Spoiler warning
At first I was confused about her motivation to kill. But I inferred, from the very first scene, that her doctor dad didn't like her, and later, that he could have been molesting her ( the scene wher he's lying in his shorts in bed when she comes home and he starts to walk toward her while she hurriedly closes the door; and the scene at the end when she starts to romantically kiss her surrogate father as if she knows no other way to express her love for a man). If that's true, she doesn't know how to respond to tenderness and real intimacy, so she equates it with death and violence ( as well as going after toxic males who treat her badly). I think this explains the attraction to cars too. Sexually abused women can express idiosyncratic sexuality, if it's under their own control--see: abused women in porn.
Maybe her doctor father wanted a boy and hated her for being a girl. Her love of cars is usually a male gender stereotype, as is the extreme violence.
I thought the director was smart to frontload the graphic, brutal killings in the first act so we could see the beautiful and tender redemption story in the second and third. And those scenes were staged and filmed very well. I did think of Tarantino in the flat mates scene, but in a good way, with excellent use of music and violence.
For sure. The gearshift the film takes toward tenderness as Lindon enters the picture is so bracing because of the the violence and intense alienation that preceded it. (As well as the entirety of RAW!) Once the emotional needs of these two people started to transcend a lot of obstacles (gender, past traumas and violence, etc.) and they both committed to disregarding the fact that their relationship is rooted in a fiction, the film does become extremely moving.
So last night I dreamed I was watching a movie with sex and nudity, and then in the middle, the film stopped, the lights went up, and the female director and star came on stage to talk about their project. That's all I remember in the dream but it's safe to assume what the movie was and who the director and star were. I rarely dream about movies, but I guess my unconscious was impacted and I desired the creator's thoughts on her work. Here's to resonant cinema!
Spoiler warning again.
I may not have answered your question about the serial killer angle. I thought it was integrated into this moving relationship tale of the second half as well as it could have been--via the news updates. Credit again to Ducournau for taking wildly different elements and putting them together, with each having depth. The fire truck dancing scene Alexia does, for example, is rich in meaning for both characters and in the director's themes.
( i briefly thought Lindon's runaway son was actually murdered by young Alexia, starting her serial killer career early, but I'm glad the movie didn't do that hacky idea. No, he ran away because of his sexuality and his father's negative reaction to it, it's implied, which makes his relationship with Alexia all the more poignant.)
Thanks, Scott, for engaging and letting me go on at length.
I had my doubts about that as well, the first part is especially loose for me in that it's juggling plenty of things that warrant perhaps a line more apt on making me "feel why" but the gamut of range from the never-ending kill streak, and to a lesser degree, fucking a car; I think they're handled as best as they possibly could be by being presented these moments as atmosphere in her sexual/personal inability. With Justine her body boards up the walls and screams fuck no (i.e. oil spilling out of her uh-oh's + the embarrassment and impossibility of letting her go down on her and by no means does this sit with me for abetting her hilarious dive into a kill streak but perhaps it is the conclusive mark to her cheap thrills, the already incumbent and disaffected relationship she has with her father can now not even be stalled, at best she will always be objectified in her most intimate of modes and whatever was personal to her will go no further than it's contractual precepts. I'm actually in awe of the line she so easily seems to cross in both intimacy and sheer brutality. Her most impassioned kiss with a predator, one of the softest hugs comes as she's gifted a bed in the midst of this insane mosh as ridiculous and comical as the pool hall scene in mean streets is, even when that car baby starts to kick as she's in the shower i'm all in on that not being anything but a horror scene and that maybe this baby can just rip through her belly in the most gorey-ish way possible but... i mean damn. For that alone and reasons why I'm averse to Malignant are the reasons why this is enjoyable. You have the serial killing spree but the angle is not fetishizing her operation or father even so much as it is the exploration inside of her incompetence to application.
Just got back from Titane and...hmm. I'm gonna need to sleep on this one for like a week. God bless critics like Scott who can pump out such a thoughtful review after one viewing.
Anyway, after the dizzying opening act I groaned a bit as I could see the movie heading into more emotional terrain. But despite that the middle section worked incredibly well for me. There's one scene in particular that is breathtaking and moving without a word spoken.
I'm not sure I cared for the ending sadly. But then that's where the need to sleep on it comes in. There's so much to unpack here but the conclusion felt a little too pat. And I found that the central relationship stagnated after that wonderful middle act.
It's such an audacious movie, though. I really need to check out RAW.
Saw Raw last week in preparation and thought it was great. I slightly preferred Raw (my wife preferred Titane) but both are with watching and feature some great filmmaking.
Saw Titane yesterday at NYFF (along with The Lost Daughter & Red Rocket) and it's practically all I've been thinking about since. I truly haven't seen something that equally grotesque and tender. A phenomenal and entrancing piece of work that's gonna be stuck in my head for quite a while.
It faded for a bit down the stretch, when it seemed to articulate its themes too explicitly and sentimentally. But god that second act is so beautiful, isn't it? Vincent Lindon just killed me in this.
Lindon was great, and Agathe Rousselle was transcendent. Is this France’s submission for International Feature? Haven’t seen that info around yet.
Our annual film festival got cancelled due to COVID, so I'm crazy jealous. What did you make of Red Rocket? I've heard good things!
That one I haven't seen. I work of Chicago and didn't not go to Cannes. Excited for it, though. Never met a Sean Baker movie I didn't like. (Fun-ish fact: I was one paragraph into my review of TANGERINE when the plug was pulled on The Dissolve.)
You may need to re-calibrate your understanding of "fun fact"
You've heard correctly. Red Rocket is great, oddly similar to Titane in that there are very uncomfortable moments to sit through (for wildly different reasons). I would hope that a Best Actor campaign for Simon Rex is happening, cause it's well deserved.
Also, Red Rocket starts by blaring NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" and as a child of the late 90s/early 2000s who grew up with a liking for boy-band pop, it pulled me in quicker than most movies do these days. But that's just a personal thing haha.
Good job name-checking the superb In My Skin, which sadly doesn’t appear to be digitally available anywhere. Glad I bought the DVD.
Me want to see Titane as, me not sure whether it best movie of year or even good movie, but it certainly most interesting. But me also not can help but think of that movie where Cameron Diaz fucks car and wonder whether every decade now gets car-fucking movie that speaks to its era. And if so, what were previous decades' car-fucking movies? Was Herbie: Fully Loaded dirtier than me realized?
Our friend Charles Bramesco hosted a Titane screening in New York this week and asked her about the Diaz scene. She said she had not seen The Counselor but intended to do so when she got back to France. Very different scenes. Not sure which one is crazier.
Just based on this and other review me have read, Titane's at least seem to have thematic resonance, as outlandish as movie's themes are. Me will admit me not have seen Counselor, but it felt lot more like that was purely for shock value.
OMG, no, you have to see THE COUNSELOR. It succeeded in frustrating the hell out of audiences because Cormac McCarthy's script is so pure--full of colorful language and philosophy. It's really something else, quite beyond what Diaz does with the car.
Okay, me adding it to list!
As a counterpoint, I saw The Counselor this year and hated it so much that it made me question if any of Cormac McCarthy's books were actually good in the first place (having read them all a decade ago).
It's pretty wild that a movie with this much fan service came from a TV show that was determined to not give the audience what they want. I'm thinking of the ending, of course, but also other times like the episode where Melfi contemplates unleashing Tony on the man who assaulted her before chiding the audience directly by saying "No!" into the camera.
I wonder if the lack of commercial success with NOT FADE AWAY, and the long gestating A RIBBON OF DREAMS falling through pushed Chase to do this for commercial reasons rather than a genuine desire to return to this world.
Matthew Weiner's post MAD MEN career has followed a similar arc with THE ROMANOFFS being mildly received with critics and audiences*, and his novel not really setting the world on fire. Maybe we will see a similar prequel/sequel project returning to those characters in future.
*It's hard to tell with streaming not publishing ratings, but when was the last time you heard anything about this show?
All points valid. I had actually started writing a graf about Chase's ambivalent relationship to his own show, and his discomfort over "fans" who came for the whackings and seemed endlessly generous in extending sympathy to Tony. I feel like those feelings are nakedly apparent in the prequel, which acquiesces to a story Chase probably doesn't want to tell while pursuing one angle (racial division in Newark, basically) that he did. It's a bummer, though, after a film as good as NOT FADE AWAY. You really miss his direction, too.
I just came back from watching Titane. I wasn't expecting a moving tale that Mary Shelley and her father, the writer and social critic, William Godwin would appreciate (and probably mom, MW, too). It's so important how we, especially fathers, raise our children. The charcterization by inference was written very well. Visually spectacular filmmaking. This my first movie by this director. She took wildly different plot and tonal elements and somehow made them not simply cohere, but be beautiful underneath the outrageousness, while telling a riveting story that is about something important for all societies. The two leads were brilliant. Grade: A
Zareh, you should definitely go back and check out RAW. There's a reason why this movie w as so hotly anticipated. One question for you (and again, a SPOILER alert here for those who want to go in cold: How do you think the film handled the serial killer angle? We witness this moment when she's taking the upper hand in what may have developed into a sexual assault, and we also see a subsequent scene where she responds to a set of circumstances through deadly violence. But the fact that she had killed before seems like kind-of-a-big-deal, no? And sort of unaddressed? (That said, I really loved her relationship with Lindon. That's when the film really came to life for me.)
(I decided using my real name and face might not be so wise online.)
Big Spoiler warning
At first I was confused about her motivation to kill. But I inferred, from the very first scene, that her doctor dad didn't like her, and later, that he could have been molesting her ( the scene wher he's lying in his shorts in bed when she comes home and he starts to walk toward her while she hurriedly closes the door; and the scene at the end when she starts to romantically kiss her surrogate father as if she knows no other way to express her love for a man). If that's true, she doesn't know how to respond to tenderness and real intimacy, so she equates it with death and violence ( as well as going after toxic males who treat her badly). I think this explains the attraction to cars too. Sexually abused women can express idiosyncratic sexuality, if it's under their own control--see: abused women in porn.
Maybe her doctor father wanted a boy and hated her for being a girl. Her love of cars is usually a male gender stereotype, as is the extreme violence.
I thought the director was smart to frontload the graphic, brutal killings in the first act so we could see the beautiful and tender redemption story in the second and third. And those scenes were staged and filmed very well. I did think of Tarantino in the flat mates scene, but in a good way, with excellent use of music and violence.
*love for a father
For sure. The gearshift the film takes toward tenderness as Lindon enters the picture is so bracing because of the the violence and intense alienation that preceded it. (As well as the entirety of RAW!) Once the emotional needs of these two people started to transcend a lot of obstacles (gender, past traumas and violence, etc.) and they both committed to disregarding the fact that their relationship is rooted in a fiction, the film does become extremely moving.
So last night I dreamed I was watching a movie with sex and nudity, and then in the middle, the film stopped, the lights went up, and the female director and star came on stage to talk about their project. That's all I remember in the dream but it's safe to assume what the movie was and who the director and star were. I rarely dream about movies, but I guess my unconscious was impacted and I desired the creator's thoughts on her work. Here's to resonant cinema!
Spoiler warning again.
I may not have answered your question about the serial killer angle. I thought it was integrated into this moving relationship tale of the second half as well as it could have been--via the news updates. Credit again to Ducournau for taking wildly different elements and putting them together, with each having depth. The fire truck dancing scene Alexia does, for example, is rich in meaning for both characters and in the director's themes.
( i briefly thought Lindon's runaway son was actually murdered by young Alexia, starting her serial killer career early, but I'm glad the movie didn't do that hacky idea. No, he ran away because of his sexuality and his father's negative reaction to it, it's implied, which makes his relationship with Alexia all the more poignant.)
Thanks, Scott, for engaging and letting me go on at length.
I had my doubts about that as well, the first part is especially loose for me in that it's juggling plenty of things that warrant perhaps a line more apt on making me "feel why" but the gamut of range from the never-ending kill streak, and to a lesser degree, fucking a car; I think they're handled as best as they possibly could be by being presented these moments as atmosphere in her sexual/personal inability. With Justine her body boards up the walls and screams fuck no (i.e. oil spilling out of her uh-oh's + the embarrassment and impossibility of letting her go down on her and by no means does this sit with me for abetting her hilarious dive into a kill streak but perhaps it is the conclusive mark to her cheap thrills, the already incumbent and disaffected relationship she has with her father can now not even be stalled, at best she will always be objectified in her most intimate of modes and whatever was personal to her will go no further than it's contractual precepts. I'm actually in awe of the line she so easily seems to cross in both intimacy and sheer brutality. Her most impassioned kiss with a predator, one of the softest hugs comes as she's gifted a bed in the midst of this insane mosh as ridiculous and comical as the pool hall scene in mean streets is, even when that car baby starts to kick as she's in the shower i'm all in on that not being anything but a horror scene and that maybe this baby can just rip through her belly in the most gorey-ish way possible but... i mean damn. For that alone and reasons why I'm averse to Malignant are the reasons why this is enjoyable. You have the serial killing spree but the angle is not fetishizing her operation or father even so much as it is the exploration inside of her incompetence to application.
Just got back from Titane and...hmm. I'm gonna need to sleep on this one for like a week. God bless critics like Scott who can pump out such a thoughtful review after one viewing.
Anyway, after the dizzying opening act I groaned a bit as I could see the movie heading into more emotional terrain. But despite that the middle section worked incredibly well for me. There's one scene in particular that is breathtaking and moving without a word spoken.
I'm not sure I cared for the ending sadly. But then that's where the need to sleep on it comes in. There's so much to unpack here but the conclusion felt a little too pat. And I found that the central relationship stagnated after that wonderful middle act.
It's such an audacious movie, though. I really need to check out RAW.
Saw Raw last week in preparation and thought it was great. I slightly preferred Raw (my wife preferred Titane) but both are with watching and feature some great filmmaking.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Michael Gandolfini, or how he fares as the young Tony.