I prefer it raw

I had a mini Julia Ducournau fest; I watched her two features, Raw (2016) and Titane (2021). The latter won this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with Ducournau becoming only the second woman to win the award (Campion won it for The Piano) and the first to win it solo (Campion shared it with Chen Kaige). About which, good for Julia, thumbs up, but Jesus H. Christ, Cannes Film Festival. Way to get your act together, I guess?

But anyway, I hope everything’s all right, Julia? None of my business, but I just want you to be well. Okay.

But seriously, this is an incredible filmmaker (I mistyped incredible for a second and spellcheck offered me ‘incurable’ which is a better descriptor) and I’m excited to see what she does next. I took a look at a list of Cannes winners. Titane appears to be the first horror film—its genre is usually described as body horror—to win at Cannes. Unless you call Parasite or Uncle Boonmee or 4 Months 3 Weeks or something else horror films. I imagine there are some arguments going on about Titane vis-a-vis horror, such as, is it horror? It is body horror, so, yes. There are plenty of the kind of stomach-churning sudden lurches into violence that also make Raw a visceral horror experience. But this movie has other modes, as well. I would say it has a generic fluidity that I associate more with East Asian films than French—Takashi Miike, for example, could plausibly make a body horror film that is also a weirdly tender-hearted fable about family without the audience objecting (too strenuously) to the genre mash-up. As in Miike’s best work, in Titane far too much happens, and in varying tones—masterfully blended in our experience of them—to limit our understanding of the film to a single, or even a couple, generic forms.

I suppose I mention it because I both love that Cannes awarded a horror film and also worry about what that label says to the audience. I guess it rightfully warns squeamish people away, people who can’t watch violence, including sexual violence, and gross stuff, like various bodily fluids, well beyond blood. Fair enough. But it also categorizes the movie in a way that limits how a general American audience might respond to it. If you’re not squeamish, but generally don’t like horror, you should still check this one out.

For me, it was an experience similar to that of watching Parasite for the first time—though they are very different movies. Movie people argue endlessly about the future of cinema, then someone drops a movie like Titane—a breath-taking, audacious, timely work of art—and it makes the worry seems silly.