Julia Ducournau burst onto the scene with her deliciously dark and transgressive cannibal flick Raw; a movie that cemented her in the pantheon of recent brilliant first film directors. From Jordan Peele to Ari Aster to Jennifer Kent to Robert Eggers, each director took a swerve on their sophomore feature film and gave us something unexpected and, sometimes, weird. So, in hindsight, it makes sense that Ducournau would crank the wheel and take a hard left turn into automobile fetishism and identity politics while still exploring sexuality in her second film, Titane. And yet I was not ready for what she was serving up.

Titane knocked me on my ass and filled me with excitement to see where she’s going next.

A cold open set in a car establishes so much about the themes Julia wants to explore in Titane. A young girl sits in the backseat, humming along to the sounds of the engine as it whirls while her father sits in the front, stoic and annoyed. Eventually, the young girl manages to get out of her seat belt, the man turns to grab her and the car goes spinning. When it comes to a stop, a red splat drips from the rear passenger window and we’re quickly whisked away to doctors putting a titanium plate in the girl’s head.

Years later, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) stalks the floor of a car show, her hair a rat nest of a mullet she controls with a sharp knitting needle. She pulls her hair back to show the world the circular scar above her ear that’s a constant reminder of who she was and who she is now. The car show sells sex and cars, with women writhing on the hoods of expensive hot rods, gesturing to the male clientele with clear intent: if you had this car, they suggest, you could fuck me. Alexia takes her place on the hood of a fiery car, writhing, humping and exaggeratedly licking the metal. For her it’s not about the male gaze or trying to sell a car through sex. Her attraction runs deep and, later that night, she sneaks back into the car show, gets in the back seat, her hands tied behind her, and rides the car for all its worth. The car, in return, bounces up and down like a bronco, leaving her thighs bruised but her needs fulfilled.

But before her vehicular carnal desire, Titane feints by introducing Justine (Raw’s Garance Marillier), a fellow dancer Alexia meets in the gang showers and summarily gets her hair stuck in Justine’s nipple ring. What would have been an awkward and queer meet cute in a different movie turns into bloodshed as Alexia begins a killing spree across the town, starting with an aggressive fan who believes he owns Alexia as he would a car.

In response, she plunges the knitting needle through his ear.

Titane’s first act tracks her violence across town with a deliriously black comedy bent as one murder turns into four when people keep showing up at her murder scene. This sequence alternately had me laughing and squirming with its mix of violence and humor, set to Caterina Caselli’s “Nessuno mi può giudicare”. Translation? “Nobody can judge me.”

From here, Titane could have been another woman-on-the-run serial killer movie, with the cops closing in and the news reports tracking her murderous activities. But Ducournau feints again when Alexia sees the poster for a missing boy named Adrien that, when aged, looks somewhat like her. So Alexia binds her chest and her stomach, breaks her nose and is taken in by Adrien’s father, Vincent (Vincent Lindon).

Ducournau’s propulsive first act slows down into a character study that places the androgynous Alexia in a place of utmost danger. It turns out that this hulking concrete slab of meat is the captain of a firehouse. His is a world of hyper masculinity that Alexia (as Adrien) must hide her femininity from. And it’s this world that Julia picks apart brick by brick. These muscular men cook, clean and dance together, but you can almost hear the “no homo” siren call in their actions. At one point, their dancing turns into a mosh pit of half naked bodies slamming into each other in the heteronormative-approved manner of homosocial bonding. It’s an unwelcome world for many queer people, particularly those who are more traditionally femme or andogynous. And Alexia’s body holds more than one secret that, if discovered, could easily lead to violence. Here, Ducournau examines gender identity and politics in a world that celebrates the buff and masculine physique.

Like Raw, Titane is a queer text that will launch a thousand thinkpieces about the way it tackles gender identity. It’s a text that examines toxic masculinity, while also exploring the importance of chosen families in surprisingly tender ways. Newcomer Agathe Rousselle is a tremendous chameleon who feels simultaneously vulnerable yet hardened to metallic sheen by the world. But Vincent Lindon is up to the task of meeting her beat for beat. His character is an enigma of a man, who isn’t afraid of slow-dancing with his “son” Alexia/Adrien, swinging Alexia in his arms with soulful love. Even here, though, the toxically masculine impulses interject, as he play-slaps Alexica across the face. It’s a moment of tenderness that’s interrupted by feelings of male inadequacy that skirts the line between what’s “acceptable” masculine behavior and what is real emotion. Through dance, Ducournau allows her male characters to connect to something that isn’t the ingrained homosocial behavior.

Titane blew me away by being everything I didn’t expect it to be. The genre flourishes absolutely work and I didn’t even mention the metaphorical ticking time bomb that threatens to upend everything...but that’s because it’s not necessary. Julia Ducournau’s transgressive sophomore feature takes what worked with Raw and ups the ante. It’s an assured film that speaks to her command of filmmaking and cements her as being the real deal. Weird, grotesque and surprisingly heartfelt, Titane is one of my favorite films this year.