A horror film about a young woman who sex with cars and is infected by a vintage Cadillac that caused shock in Australia is coming to the UK.
Hundreds of Australians were at the Sydney Film Festival’s premiere of the gory thriller on Thursday, when they fell ill.
Julia Ducournau (French director) tells the story in Titane of a young girl who kills without a thought and pretends that she is a boy while being pregnant by a vintage car.
Viewers who attended a screening at Sydney Film Festival reported that scores of people left the cinema while others fainted.
The horror film will be available in UK cinemas on December 31st, 2012.
Several hundred Australian viewers left the Titane’s premiere at Sydney Film Festival on Thursday and fell ill.
Some scenes were so violent that cinema-goers had to shield their eyes during the film’s early festival screenings. There were sharp inhalations and nervous giggles.
The film still received a standing ovation on its opening night at Cannes Film Festival in France.
The murderous heroine is obsessed with cars and has sex in a car. She then becomes pregnant and gives birth.
The film might have won Palme d’Or, the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, but it has turned the stomachs of many who watch it.
Julia Ducournau (French director) tells the story in Titane of a young girl who kills without a thought and pretends that she is a boy, despite being pregnant with a vintage car.
#SydFilmFest tonight: 15 people walked out from Titane Missed a great but strange movie! One person tweeted.
Another wrote: “A friend fainted last night during TITANE and told me that 20 others did the same thing – now that’s cinema baby!”
Another person reported that they had been involved in multiple walkouts during Titane.
Audience members who attended a screening at Sydney Film Festival said that scores left the cinema, unable or unwilling to face the reality of what they were seeing. As many as 20 people fainted.
One more: “13 people fainted during the Sydney premiere of Titane.”
Ducournau admitted to reporters that some scenes were difficult for her to watch. However, she said that even the most horrific parts had a narrative purpose. She stated that she hates gratuitous violence.
The film was compared with ‘Crash’ by David Cronenberg – another controversial take on driving and eroticism- and Blue Velvet’ (by David Lynch), which were both instantly classics after being premiered in Cannes.
The Hollywood Reporter suggested that the movie, which is up for the Palme d’Or competition, could herald a ‘French Punk-Queer Wave’. IndieWire, however, said that it was ‘one the wildest films ever shown at Cannes’.
Although the flick won the Palme d’Or, the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival, it has captivated many who have seen it.
Others were not as open to it. The Guardian called it a car crash’ due to its’sheer silliness, towering pointlessness’. Liberation in France said that the storyline was ‘pretty inarticulate’. Le Temps in Switzerland wondered what the film-maker meant by her ’pretentious’ offering.
While some were disappointed by the French director (whose cannibalistic debut Raw’ delighted critics just a few years back), others gave her their full support.
“Ducournau breaks all rules, to our greatest delight,” declared French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. “Her furious film is unlike any other.”
The horror film will be available in UK cinemas on December 31st, so British audiences can test their skills.
The director admitted that she felt ‘a lot’ anger while writing the film.
She stated that Trump had just been elected and that the world was not a happy one.
She stated that she was “very pessimistic about future and about a society with no room to fluidity, transformation and for change and inclusion.”