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Julia Ducournau might be close to cornering the cinematic market on the concept of shock and delight.
Its hard to talk about this movie without spoiling too much, but well try!
Because its just too much.
So I wanted to have new images in my head, new ideas for whats next.
And yet, if you think its something you cant do, you have to do it.
It has to be more transcendental.
You have all of these monsters and taboos that are constantly conveyed.
The titans, some are male and some are female, but its not really clear, their gender.
When you read it, the genders are blurry.
I think thats super interesting.
She also has metal in her head, of course.
You dont need to psychologize it.
You understand it and why she has these feelings for the car.
Her biological father never looks at her.
He constantly cancels her presence from the moment shes a kid.
Thats why her impulses and her death drive blurt out of her.
She doesnt have a constructed look at herself from one of the pillars of her birth.
He wants to create a fantasy [of her].
Thats how I built him, in opposition to her father.
Whats your writing and creative process like?Its hard to summarize the process into words.
I think its mundane and boring.
But the writing is very solitary.
Youre alone for a very long time.
I work at home, by myself.
I can never stop thinking about something when I know that I have it.
I get immersed into the story.
Theres nothing else I can think about.
All I do is read things that I know will help me build the story.
When youre in front of a painting or a photograph or a sculpture, nobody explains it to you.
You look at it and you wait to enter it, alone with your thought process.
Its incredibly stimulating for the imagination.
After that, its seriously 95 percent pain and 5 percent grace.
What works of art were running through your mind while writing this and making this?So many things.
Nan Goldins work, the photographer, is something I very often go back to.
The energy of some of her pictures.
The way she looks at people and at theabsenceof people.
She has a series … and its justan empty bed with sheets and the lightcoming through the side.
She photographs her friends as a group, and theyre super lively.
Theyre not super beautiful or anything.
It looks loud, like theyre having the best time.
She has love for what other people might find ugly and disturbing.
With my DP, when were talking about contrast, you have to be very precise.
It can look very cartoonish, and if you go a bridge too far, youre done.
Youre outside of the character, outside of the situation.
So I gave him pictures of paintings that are very good with contrast.
I gave him a poster ofThe Empire of Lifeby Rene Magritte.
I also showed himSummer Night by Homer Winslow.
You know, in the shot, where [Alexia is] puking in the sea?
Were trying to produce the light of this painting at this moment.
Tell me about finding and casting Agathe.
Her performance is so intense and shes so committed, and the movie hinges on her entirely.
But its her first role.
She doesnt have many lines.
From the start, I knew I had to find a fresh face.
I would have hated that.
So I knew I had to cast an unprofessional woman.
Or man, because I also [auditioned] men for this part.
I looked for people with androgynous looks on Instagram and various other social medias with my casting director.
Agathe was on Instagram, I think.
We looked for the people you sometimes find in edgy fashion shoots.
It says a lot when someone can say a line without bumping anything.
Afterward, it was a full year of work.
I had to basically teach her to act.
We worked a lot on other scenes, monologues mainly, because it was just the two of us.
I wanted to have her separate from the rest [of the cast].
We worked on the famous monologue from Sidney LumetsNetwork.
We worked on Donnas monologue inTwin Peaks, over Laura Palmers tombstone.
To me, this movie felt like a queer found-family story.
Its also got a lot to say about gender and sexuality and fluidity.
Its not even an effort to do it, its just how I see things.
But I know talking about that cant be done lightly.
It had to transpire in my mise-en-scene, with light, with angles.
Not just the script.
Its also how you portray and deconstruct gender stereotypes.
By deconstructing them, you have to build them first.
But not in a realistic way.
My car show and my fire station are not realistic.
You have women firefighters in real life, as much as you have men.
But I needed [all-male] firefighters to contrast the feminine with the masculine.
Maybe cars are better treated than the women, actually.
It does seem that way.But theyre all beautiful.
I didnt want something degrading for the dancers.
They do what they do well, and theyre beautiful.
But the fact that you only have men around them says it all.
You dont even have to have the men doing something creepy.
Its just men holding phones.
Thats it, and its enough to say something.
Because all of a sudden, its her desire that takes over the scene.
Shes looking at you; youre not looking at her.
Shes looking through the camera, owning the situation, owning the car, owning you.
My body, my gaze.
Its the progression I wanted for this first shot.
The idea of portraying this super-sexualized world for the character, it creates a trap for the audience.
You think the whole movie is going to be like that.
And then you realize femininity is not what it looks like.
Its not what you think.
Its so much blurrier, broader, more flexible.
Femininity is actually manly, and the reverse is true as well.
For me, the gender thing is absolutely irrelevant.
You cant define anyone by their gender.
In general, gender is irrelevant for me as an identity definition.
That critique sort of started with the coverage ofRawand how it made people pass out in the aisles.
How many men direct horror movies that are so much more graphically shocking than what I do?
I mean, seriously.
Im sick of it.
It bothers you.It bothers me, it does.
Because it feels like you do one step forward, three steps backward.
Its kind of demeaning to my work.
I think provocation is gratuitous.
Everything is so thought ahead.
And gratuity is so boring.
I venture to stay at the level of my characters.
I do not go above their limits.
But the moment I think about that, I erase it from my mind.
Because it takes you out of the story.
Anything that is not coherent to my characters journey, I erase it.
How would you then situate and characterize the role graphic violence and body horror plays in your work?
Because to me, it reads as incredibly funny.
Its not a battle plan, exactly.
I dont say, Im going to put a little bit of this, a bit of comedy.
For me, I need these scenes as a writer.
I know that when something gets too dark, my reflex is to laugh about it.
To take the audience with me and just venture to have good, dark fun about it.
Not to take it too seriously.
Im like this in life, too.
It sticks to my skin.
I dont like to feel icky.
Yeah, to me,Titanefeels like a really life-affirming movie.Thank you!
I agree with that.
For me, this is way more optimistic in the end thanRawwas.
At the end, there is newness.
My movie is just like my character.
It sheds skin like a snake.
At the end, you have something that is just the essence.
Whats left is so much love.
