Man of Steel — Titane (2021) Film Analysis
CW: HEAVY Titane spoilers, sexual assault, gender dysphoria, misgendering/deadnaming, antitransmasculinity, transphobia, sex work, body horror.
No matter what you’re made of, the body is always made of something. Flesh, blood, bone, feelings, fear — a soul floating around somewhere “inside”. We regulate the body, and we learn to care for what we are made of. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we try, and sometimes we just…can’t. There are many ways to be stuck inside of yourself, but many of us are not just stuck within this substance of the body, but the consciousness, too, does not feel free within its own home and creation. In a way, if you’re a kid who grows up with an abnormal appearance or body in any way, we are lucky. We are able to develop some kind of permanence inside of the self, separated from the outer body. A little boy stuck on flypaper inside of himself. Awareness of the body, independent of the soul. It’s hard to feel displaced by something that can give you such awareness. We learn to make ourselves at home in the body, because there isn’t another way. TITANE represents so much to me, but mostly it is the journey of understanding the self in relation to others and a testament to the simultaneous beauty and devastating pain that comes with messy identity, mismatched flesh, and the desire to not end the pain, but to truly feel the warmth of our own outer bodies. I don’t at all believe that TITANE is a malevolent or exploitative film, particularly when it comes to transmasculine transition and dysphoria, trans bodies, trans pregnancy, nor is it a pariah of misogynistic emptiness, created to make spectacle of the body.
A kid stims in the backseat to the tune of the engines purr — a kid doing kid things. Punishment for it comes swiftly, and before you know it, your body is no longer made of only flesh, but titanium as well. We are not told at the start of the film if Alexia is a boy or a girl, and everything about their appearance is ambiguous — shoulder length straight hair, a gray shirt with a unicorn on it that doesn’t read as overtly girly. This, emphasized even further once Alexia gets a buzzcut, courtesy of the fresh metal plate surgeons put into her head after a car crash. This change of the body is significant. An experience like a near-death crash can be a catalyst for so many things, and for Alexia, this spawns a kinship with the vehicle that led her to having a plate in her head, the very body of it. Everything has a body. Alexia embraces the body of the vehicle, forsaking the warmth of her parents following closely behind. The difference of the body sparking an intimacy for something made of parts just like Alexia. The only moment Alexia’s face is not in an entirely flat expression is when they embrace the slab of steel. This only continues as we progress and meet a grownup Alexia — flat expression, one that reads determination, a goal pursued.
Straight from the embrace, to an adult Alexia, working a car show, soon to be mingling with a car cloaked in flames. There is a moment during this dance where they stare into the imagined viewer’s eyes, center frame, right into the target of the lens. This moment followed by a fan asking Alexia for a photo, their smile dropping the second the camera took its shot — I can feel it. This Alexia is not the true self. This spectacle is more apparition than corporeal. When you exist in a body both stable and unstable, both yours and the audiences and when you are consistently in environments where your physical body is meant to be a live object, alluring and on display — a kind of dissonance is born. You can separate from the local body, to perform, to be someone else, to truly engage without engaging as the one you truly are. Alexia doesn’t look like themselves when they smile in that photo — and it isn’t because of the makeup. In the shower after her show, she collides with another worker, Alexia’s hair getting stuck in her nipple ring. Alexia asks if she beeps at security, white frantically attempting to unravel her hair from the metal, tearing away quickly and hurting the girl when they are rushed out by another. The difference between the person donned in shiny gold, shaking ass atop the hood of a flame-painted car, eye-fucking the camera, deeply aware of how much their paycheck depends on it — and the person in the shower, naked, alongside other naked people, but still feeling foreign, is immense. Those are different people, and the one the people want is the dancer in gold. Alexia knows it. I connect with this character so deeply through this display of the difficult ability to obscure the (true] self to successfully engage your responsibilities, to keep yourself fed. I connect because I know what it means when the you that really exists isn’t the one people prefer, so you live in a limbo of half-life where the you that gets admiration and flowers isn’t the you that you are when you go to sleep at night.
The affection received from most comes in the form of stalking, overbearing fanaticism, a stranger who chases full sprint, to beg for an autograph, to push for a kiss. How do you blame a body for reacting to such horrid stimulus, poised as desire? Our protagonist is a killer, yes. Existence as a sex worker or erotic laborer or any kind places a body in limbo — yours and not yours, yours and the audiences. A dissonance that can bend the soul into a twisted, unfamiliar beast. A beast that feels more like you. Days, weeks, months, years of shoving it down, to perform, to earn, to live. The separation slowly ground down, the ability to shift and to hide as necessary waning thinner and thinner. Alexia, a specter of a hysterical, violent woman, pushed to the edge by her own selfishness, her own deviance. Alexia, the fragmented titanium creation, done and undone by a mask of normalcy, of repression. Julia Ducournau said in an interview with CNN: ““I don’t perceive (the Biblical references) as being religious,” she insisted. “I do like to chase the sacred … but this sacred is the sacred of humanity. It’s more about all the possibilities of humanity, in terms of transformation.” Titane is a tale of Mary becoming Jesus, becoming Mary, and becoming Jesus, again.
Ducournau has said in a few interviews that she cannot relate at all to Alexia, and it is true that this character is unrelatable in many ways, because of certain choices she makes and ways that she is able to move through the world. I am not a murderer, in spite of our similar circumstances, and in spite of the way I can relate to a murderous rage brought on by someone whose desire is only violence. Nor is it likely that I would get away with such actions if they were done. But the bones of Alexia and the ways in which she unravels and adapts are so familiar. The ability for Alexia to “pass” as male with a haircut, a nose break, tight binding and muted speech and thus the deep, somewhat obvious transmasculine coding is a part of why many opt to see them only as a psychopathic murderer, unrelatable in every way. There are many films following women who have little motive for evil things they do — what is it that separates Alexia and doesn’t allow her status into the “psychotic woman” trope we love so much and instead makes her unsympathetic and empty? Alexia’s approximation to masculinity, and particularly to transmasculinity that spawns this view, as society struggles to recognize the vulnerability of transmasculine people, opting to erase them as hysterical women or bury them as violators of motherhood, the family, of women as whole. What is it that makes so many minimize the assaults she has suffered demonizing her behavior as random and extreme instead of acts of deserved vengeance? This approximation to transmasculinity prevents so many viewers with unconscious (and often conscious) bias to separate the sexualization and violence they suffer from the body (masculine, unsexualized) they become. I feel beautiful catharsis watching the sharp hairpin impale her assailant’s ear canal. I could never do it, and would not. But this is not reality. This is the one where people like us continue to perform, no matter the cost.
In the first moment of bliss Alexia experiences in the film, we watch something rare and immaculate, abnormal presented to us similarly than an average sex scene would be. So often I am against the “normalization” of certain things, as it’s abnormality is such a large part, or perhaps even all of it’s appeal — but when it comes to most forms of deviant sexuality, I believe that normalization can be and often is beneficial to people like me, queer trans sex working freaks. You can be a genderfucked metal lover having a blissful climax with an automotive the same way you can have happy cishet sex under the covers in missionary. DIfferent strokes. The beauty is in connection, in pleasure, in honesty. There is a metaphor in shutting a door behind you and being alone with someone in the finite space that a car can represent. In alternative sexualities especially coupled with having a marginalized gender, society forces us to conceal and obscure to survive, to not be deemed predacious. The beauty of a closed door and climactic bliss where our deviance and pleasure can roam without fear is essential to life. This communion with the car as an acknowledgement of desire is an opening up into the beyond, a realization that an embrace of impulse is necessary, because the impulse is one long grown inside of you, a seed planted when you were young that you were forced to neglect. Watering the seed, the act of coitus with the flesh [[metal]] you truly desire, is more than a spectacle, more than a shocking depiction of alternative sexuality — it is a contract Alexia signs with themselves to never turn back.
If you view the behavior of Alexia as that of a deranged and unemotional woman who is hellbent on causing pain and destruction, meant to showcase some picture of misogynistic, unstable, violent womanhood — you will get just that. Instead, I see things a different way from the moment that Alexia plunges her hairpin into the ear of the vile man, steps out of the shower dripping wet and melts together with something that’s been a part of her for a long time. I see someone who has stepped into the light after a very long time of hiding. Someone who expresses in ways just as volatile as the rest, but who is demonized in body and in soul for those same transgressions.
It’s a bittersweet freedom, as Alexia, in this cage of body and spirit, was grounded by it. They are not a perfect being who has never done any wrong, and I don’t argue for that. I argue that there is more that meets our eyes, a way to perceive the choices made that don’t relegate Alexia to nothing but a cisfem caricature of the transmasculine. There is so much said in the quiet after Alexia becomes Adrien. We just have to listen.
After an unsuccessful hookup, Alexia discovers the immaculate conception, motor oil coating her panties. A sharp hairpin, a symbolic weapon and tool of choice, an accessory typically seen as very feminine, the only thing we see Alexia cling to that says “feminine” — the weapon and the tool. This to directly motion to their uncomort with femininity and womanhood, their use of it as a tool and a weapon, not as their true personhood. This hairpin tool fails to rid Alexia of the growth filling up their insides. The failure in this moment creates a shift. The body changes again, in a way the soul cannot find congruence with. A shift. And blood. No longer alone on this journey, no longer the only one with control over the body. A nightmare of Titan-like proportions for someone in vulnerable situations, like Alexia. An even greater nightmare for someone with such deep body-soul incongruence. Imagine if Mary was Jesus. Imagine if Jesus carried Mary. Imagine that your body is not your body, and now your body is another’s home. No looking back. Find a way to free yourself from this body. Erase the ones who made you and kept you in this shell, create a symbol of the permanence of your escape. There is no going back, all that is left is ash.
Some criticisms of Titane critique the theme of immaculate conception and the birth of a child, citing that the pregnancy and birth is what spawns sympathy for an otherwise entirely redeemable character, thus valorizing the act of carrying a pregnancy as an all-holy act, creating a hierarchy of humanity where childbearers sit firmly at the top. The transformation Alexia undergoes, becoming Adrien, and the love that is shared between him and his adoptive father is the point of it all. The child is not the point, remaining obscured to the best of Adriens ability throughout most of the runtime, with no regard for their health or the health of the fetus. The only grace Alexia is given during the film is given first because she is a child, and again when she becomes someone else’s child and a third simply because Adrien’s existence is keeping anothers afloat. That is not true care or consideration or understanding or value because of a womb or the potential of childbirth. When Alexia first transforms into Adrien, the experience is entirely painful, but deeply gratifying. The experience of desperately trying to become what you want and need to be is so often a viscerally ugly one. Transition is a beautiful and liberating experience — it is often still painful and grotesque. The beauty is that in spite of that pain, we continue forward because we must. It is a cruel irony, the binding of a chest to appear more masculine. The constant pressure, ribs out of place, no full deep breaths. A slow suffocation for a modicum of safeness in the body and soul.
As the relationship between Vincent and Adrien begins to develop, Vincent is protective and loving, telling Adrien on the first night that he will kill anyone who tries to hurt them, even if it is himself. This type of love resembles the way that trans people look out for one another in certain environments, pledging ourselves to keeping one another safe no matter what. It also resembles the ways that good parents of trans children will protect their child from undue scrutiny and intense questionnaires about their private information. Even though Vincent doesn’t know he is protecting Adrien from being clocked, he is. He has given Adrien the Vincent, Chief of the Firehouse sign-off, which means no questions. Vincent is God, and Adrien is Jesus [and Mary].
“Well, no one told me about her, the way she lied
Well, no one told me about her, how many people cried
But it’s too late to say you’re sorry
How would I know, why should I care?
Please don’t bother tryin’ to find her
She’s not there”
[cause she is a boy, actually]
Adrien is extremely touch averse at the start of the film and becomes slowly less so throughout it’s runtime. This extreme touch aversion to the point of lashing out at themselves or others is a relatable experience as an autistic trans person with a lot of trauma and a lot of bodily dysphoria. The experience of extreme fear and aversion to intimate touch that Adrien battles is deeply familiar. Can’t let anyone too close because what if it gives you away? What if they only see you as a boy from 6 feet away? Better safe than sorry, don’t let them close. Even Adrien could not resist the temptation of intimacy entirely in spite of such high stakes, and the consequences of a slip in this protective barrier are dire.
The thematic elements of body pain, body horror, physical health decline and medical abuse emphasize the trans coding of this film even farther. We learn that Vincent injects himself with intramuscular steroids in order to retain his strength and hopefully build more as he ages. Vincent’s story independent of Adrien is an incredible exploration of traditional masculinity and sexuality and the ableism inherent to patriarchal expectations of masculinity and manhood, which lend themselves in their own respect to my trans reading of the film. It’s obvious that Vincent feels his physical strength and capabilities are, if not *the* thing that makes him a man, it’s one of the most important. When his body fails him, he resembles a child, small and lost and afraid. Vincent in his most masculine form is when he is not looking in a mirror, not graded against a clock, when he is, loving and dancing. His loss of strength has emasculated him, but the passion and drive that has been reignited in him through Adrien slowly fills him up again. Highlighted in this is the way that building a relationship with your trans child can heal everyone. There is so much intimacy and affirmation of manhood and love in the moments where Vincent shaves Adriens head, or teaches him to shave his nonexistent beard. Adrien is given this haircut and sent to an attempt at blending in with cis men. Like a criminal hoping to not be caught, we watch as a boy desperately attempts to make it through a day of work without being clocked and put in danger, only making it past further ridicule because a respected man speaks up for him. This is the nature of a lot of transmasc “passing” — a precarious endeavor in which your level of success can hinge on the acceptance of a truly respected member of the group.
Fire symbolism is heavy throughout the film, showcasing itself in many ways both destructive and restorative. A symbol of masculinity, something that can create safety and security for others and can help guide them or something so disastrous and careless it harms everything it touches, deflates what comes near it. Fire can cleanse, and fire can ruin. Titane asks us to consider the ways that men connect with each other through music and dance, through non-violence. The men thrash their sweaty bodies around, colliding into one another, sharing warmth and joy. They transfer energy from one to the other through movement that brings catharsis and connection. A vehicle to connect and to free ourselves. Strong and capable men dancing together bathed in pink light. Vincent later shoots up steroids in a bathroom bathed in wall to wall pink so he can stay with these men.
One part of Titane that I am heavily critical of, because I feel it aids to some popular misconceptions and ideals about transmasculinity, is the scene in which Adrien boards a bus and a woman on there is heckled by some other passengers and he does not step up to defend her. So many saw it in the way I was afraid of, that it was an act of voluntary selfishness, in that Adrien realized they “passed” as male and consciously decided to ignore the men heckling the woman on the train because it wasn’t his problem and he could get away unharmed by being invisible. This is a part of the myth of transmasculine invisibility/erasure being a privilege. From the very start of Alexia attempting to pass as Adrien, they are only given any respect or protection because Vincent [ a strong cis man in a position of authority over the other men] demands it and he has enough material authority to validate these demands. This doesn’t apply when Vincent isn’t around. Adrien did not avoid being accosted on the bus because they adequately passed for a cis man, and thus earned the respect of the bus harassers. Instead what we witness is the intersections of fatphobia, ableism, sanism, whiteness and cissexism that land Adrien in a spot where the desirability scale is so low that these violent misogynistic men could not easily make him into a desirable object, so they ignore him entirely. This is viewed as a cruel act of carelessness from Adrien, and a way to reinforce their psychopathy, when the truth is, speaking as someone who has spoken up to cis men before as a non-passing GNC trans person, Adrien speaking up would mean revealing one of the most clockable elements of his existence, thus putting his status as “passing” in danger, and creating an entirely new situation that likely ends up with both parties being seriously harmed. This also brings me to the way that Vincent protects Adrien in general — callous that this is viewed as some transmasc passing fantasy by some, when the reality is that Adrien would have been harmed, dead or incarcerated if they did not have a parental figure acting on their behalf, protecting their rights and humanity and privacy. This is pretty much how all kids are treated. No agency, no way to protect yourself unless someone decides they’re going to help you be protected. Not all little girls who are little boys get that. Not all little girls who are just strange little girls get that.
There is a needle drop of the song Lighthouse by Future Islands during a beautiful dance sequence, the bodies of the men converging under neon lights, cigarette smoke filling the air. Titane was the first time I ever heard this song, and now it’s one of my favorites of all time, with lyrics that feel so undeniably trans it almost hurts.
“But I’ve seen the way
That bodies lie and bodies tend to break
And I’ve been away
I’ve been away too long
Too long to be afraid
But you know
What you know is better, is brighter
And you know, you know
What you know is better, is brighter
And this is where we were
When I showed you the dark
Inside of me, in spite of me
On a bench in the park
You said to me
This is not you”
Lighthouse reads like a song from the perspective of someone who loves a person that is different, different in a way that might seem painful, like it’s hurting them — but ultimately, they are shown that this is the only way. That the person we tried so hard to be, isn’t us. That it’s okay. Shifting to the perspective of that trans person post-reveal of who they are, expressing fear and distance from the one they love at this acknowledgement of truth. They trade disbelief back and forth — knowing they both understand the way that bodies lie, and tend to break, and they decide eventually that what exists is both inside and outside, because and in spite of them. It’s a ballad of transcendence, acceptance and engulfing and honest love. A wonderful theme for this film.
“And this is where we are
In your bed, in my arms
Outside of me, in spite of we
I showed you the dark
And you said to me
You know
What you know is better, is brighter”
Adrien taking a moment to put on a dress and admire his body sends me deeper into thoughts of trans perseverance. The act of crossdressing in private. The fear that comes just from wearing cloth on your body. A crescendo when your parent walks through the door and there’s no way to hide the truth of what’s happening behind the door, and a moment of healing when putting on the dress only validates your position as a son. A moment of respite before the horror of the journey kept secret can no longer be ignored. The ace bandage binding becomes more irritating, impossible to ignore the disgusting overstimulation permeating through to your bones, scratching at the uncomfortable reddened flesh until it’s torn through. A desire I have had more times than I can count. An even greater emphasis on the horror of this transformation is the slick, sticky, heavy motor oil that leaks from Adriens chest as he grasps at his aching body, the complete opposite texture, color and function of what should be coming out of aching breasts. Existing in the incongruent body coming to a head, no longer able to ignore the takeover. Your body is not yours, but it can be.
When Adrien is first discovered by someone as a fugitive, as not-adrien, he is actively convulsing on the floor in pain, no cards to play, fully vulnerable. They look down at Adrien in pain and say “you poor thing” — the reaction so many people, even trans people, believe that transphobes and TERFS have toward trans men. Lost, poor, pitiful little things in need of comfort. What follows the expression of pity is more often than not, a declaration of utility that must be reached, lest you be discarded. It is never just “poor thing” it is “poor thing, but we can find use for you, so whatever fucked up reason you did this will be paid for with your body, your blood, or your soul” the pity is never real. The care is never really care. Recognition as a useful tool is not recognition as a valued part of humanity, of creation.
The pity is never real, and it is always conditional. The reasons why we do what we do are rarely heard without bias and sincerely understood but instead assumed to be manipulative and malevolent, misguided and uninformed. So many critiques of Titane say that it makes a monstrosity out of male pregnancy or pregnancy in general but I believe that fails to integrate the fact that this pregnancy has been forced onto them. This is an immaculate conception. Alexia tried to get rid of the child many times, Adrien did, too. What’s happening to them is not monstrous because of how it appears, or because of the specific way this bodily transformation manifests, but because this should not be happening to them at all.
As Adrien slowly becomes more amenable to intimacy and connection with Vincent, he reveals his true nature by accident — a simple slip of a towel. In that moment Vincent says something I think every daughter who didn’t get to be somebody’s son wishes they could have heard:
“I don’t care who you are. You’re my son. You’ll always be my son. Whoever you are.”
So rarely have I been met with such a fantastic metaphor for genuinely unconditional acceptance and love. There is no reason to question anymore if Vincent would protect and love Adrien if he knew the truth, because he knows it, and the love remains. There is an indescribable depth of the pain I feel for all of us who will never be met with this kind of acceptance. The pain of coming to understand that I was not loved in this way but I must perform to earn it. The more I perform the angrier I get at myself for what I must do to live. Forming connections with parts of me that I did not ask for, but did not ever mean to hurt me. It is a painful and devastating experience to live in a body you want to love but you are incapable of viewing as any more than a curse.
Adrien is put in front of a crowd of men, and again the body-mind incongruence is set ablaze. The only time Adrien has spent time at the front of a crowd, especially a crowd of leering and hungry men was as an object of desire. Almost like remote activation, Adrien slips back into skin of the performer, the object of desire, the crowd fucker. The world says this role can only be filled by an other — no men. Only things like men, not fully men, and women. Clocked. Passing as a test. Passing as conditional. Passing as a show.
This dance in front of a hungry crowd of firemen becomes representative of how fallible traditional heterosexual cis male sexuality is, and how much this contributes to antitransmasculinity and transphobia in general. Men fully under the influence of hegemonic cis male sexuality cannot make heads or tails of someone performing “feminine sexuality” when coming from someone they view as a masculine figure, as it creates a space where they must acknowledge the fluidity of masculine sexuality, or cast this experience into a territory of deviant wrongness, to be shunned, to be erased, to be ignored. A paradox of transmasculinity that makes a lot of cishet men and women feel very discombobulated, that is often worked out by being taken out on transmascs + men. In 10+ watches of this film, I never laughed at the faces of confusion and disgust. I withdraw into myself, a crumbling snail afraid of what’s to come from this expression. Adrien is shamed by Vincent after being caught performing for the crowd and this rejection pulls him into the arms of the familiar — cold automotive metal. This time with the automotive is different than the last as they do not seem relieved after, instead even more in pain, reaching for Vincent’s embrace.
Adrien reveals their name to Vincent, a symbol of trust and love, as they reach out for comfort.
Alexia is not mute, they are trying not to get clocked. They speak around Vincent once, and are no longer afraid. He is not amoral, he is concerned with things being right or wrong, but like many of us, they do not have the same definition of these things, especially after living in a world that punishes them for things others are encouraged and rewarded for. Alexia feels, and they feel so much. He is not a psychopath or sociopath. They returned the same coldness their parents offered to them, and found the embrace of something that held them in warmth. Alexia’s ability to give birth to a new metal cross breed human is not a beautiful and transgressive act of discovery. It is a tragic depiction of the ways that a life discarded, can suddenly be valued when someone gets something new out of it. It was the act of keeping another man alive after his own tragedy. The birth of the little metaloid child is not a triumph, it is the beginning of a new set of pain and horror, and a promise fulfilled. Vincent wont be alone. The birth of the child symbolizes the incredible things that can spawn from “deviant”, alternative sexuality and love. We can create things entirely new, new modes of love and life and family and existence. It is a love letter to the ways we find joy in the gutter. A testament to the ways that trans people are born in bodies that we feel far away from, and in the acts to get us closer to ourselves, others might only see harm and destruction — but that destruction to us is a release, a cleansing, an admission of truth and an entry into true life, a promise to never turn back.
TITANE is a love letter to broken people, broken bodies, to queer joy and loss. To the fire of transformation, and the visceral intensity and beauty of being faced with our own mortality. A celebration and a critique of the masculine ideal. It’s an expression of inescapable transmasculine pain and dysphoria. It is not for those who want a blackout curtain placed to obscure the brutality transmasculine existence so often encompassess, but for those who desire to see this pain scrawled into the walls, so we can know that the pain is real and somebody else can see it and feel it except for us, alone in the bathroom clawing at our chests. So that we can be seen outside of objects of use or desire.
