Thread by @thetimes

After the Titane's festival premiere it was immediately dubbed (by a male critic) “the most shocking film of 2021”

Its star, @AgatheRousselle, dismisses this as sexist nonsense

thetimes.co.uk/article/titane…

Roughly 30 minutes into this extraordinary and inescapably violent film, Rousselle's character smashes her own nose deliberately against the corner of a Belfast sink

For many viewers of the movie, which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and is France’s submission for next year’s Oscars, the scene is just too much.

And they walk out

Rousselle shrugs and says, “That’s a shame. Because that’s the last thing that’s super-hard to watch, and the next hour is pretty OK”

Which is only really true if you’re “pretty OK” with images of a woman battling a strange metal growth that’s slowly ripping her apart from the inside

Titane, written and directed by the French film-maker Julia Ducournau, is about Alexia, a serial killer who had a titanium plate inserted in her skull after a car crash

One night Alexia makes love to a vintage Cadillac and becomes pregnant

Rousselle calls the film “a hippy message in hardcore clothing”

Before she accepted the role she was told, “This is going to be intense, it’s going to be hard, and it’s going to be demanding. Do you still want to do it?”

She did

The comments about Titane being “the most shocking film of 2021” are, she says, triggered by a male media establishment that struggles with the very idea of women film-makers making violent movies featuring violent women

"If it had been a male director — Tarantino, Cronenberg, anyone — it would’ve been less surprising.

And we’re so used to men being violent and making violent movies. It’s kind of time for men to know that women can be violent as well.”

Read @KevinTMaher's full interview with Rousselle here:

thetimes.co.uk/article/titane…