Titane

The controversial winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes this past July, Julia Ducournau’s unclassifiable—it is at once a horror film, a fantasy, a drama, a grisly dark comedy, and an exercise in gender fluidity—pastiche features riveting newcomer Agathe Rousselle as a psychopathic car model with a titanium plate in her head, who kills without compunction, literally has a sexual craving for automobiles, and seeks salvation at the hands of a fireman (Vincent Lindon) longing for the son who disappeared years ago. This is gorgeously shot and beyond flamboyant—it is also not for the faint of heart. ‘Ducournau's beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy is a nightmarish yet mischievously comic barrage of sex, violence, lurid lighting and pounding music. It's also impossible to predict where it's going to go next… The storytelling is lucid and propulsive, so you are always clear on what's happening, even if you aren't clear on why, and the gore is balanced by humour and even levity, so you smile as well as retch… Ducournau has driven to the boundaries of conventional cinema—then put her foot down.’—Nicholas Barber, BBC Culture