Author: Isabel Sandoval
Translator: Qin Tian
Proofreading: Easy two three
Source: Film Comment (October 12, 2021)
Giulia di Cuno is the first female director in the history of the Cannes Film Festival to win the Palme d'Or alone, and her award-winning work "Titanium" unexpectedly lurks a touching and tender story under the appearance of a fearsome body horror film, bringing a bright color to the screen.
Giulia di Kuno
The film's protagonist, Alexia (played by Agatha Roselle, who is a bit like Buster Keaton) is a sexy, pregnant girl with a car, who behaves violently and immorally, and after killing a man who pursues her with a hairpin on her head, she begins to flee.
Disguised as Adrian, a boy who had been missing for many years, Alexia began to reshape her body and identity.
The second half of the film traces this transformation of Alexia, which brings a sense of strangeness and unsettling beauty to her life, and Alexia becomes increasingly intimate with Adrian's father, Vincent, a fire captain, and the actor who plays the role, Vincent Linden, contributes one of the most touching performances on screen this year.
All in all, titanium's story is bold and sensitive, and it's about trauma, family, and twisted love. After being released at the New York Film Festival, "Titanium" was released in the United States on October 1.
Isabelle Sandova, the director of Free Language, interviewed Giulia di Kuno by video link on behalf of Film Review magazine, and talked about the film's presentation of the body, desire, empathy, comedy and other topics.
Q: What's the thing that fascinates you most about your body? Are there any special experiences or memories of its attraction to you?
Giulia di Kuno: My parents were both doctors. When I was a kid, at night, they would talk about their jobs and their patients. I grew up listening to these, and there are a lot of books and magazines related to medicine at home. Medicine is everywhere in my life. I found that people whose parents were both doctors had the feeling that death was perceived in childhood.
For me, this experience made me think more and do things from the perspective of human nature. My parents were compassionate people, and they always told me, "Every patient is different, and everyone's body is different."
I believe that in the face of death, we are all equal. But at the same time, we all have our own unique experiences with our bodies.
Q: I've put together a list of the most emotional and visually impactful films, including of course Raw Food and Titanium, both of which have protagonists that shock the audience. Can you share with me again the role that desire plays in your work? Especially the relationship between desire and gaze? You mentioned that in Titanium, you're trying to subvert the male gaze that usually dominates how we look at the female body.
Giulia Di Kuno: Yes, you're right. For me, gaze has socially constructed connotations, especially when you talk about male gaze, but so does female gaze. This gaze is biased in some way and is socially constructed. Desire, on the other hand, is a way to escape staring. For me, desire means freedom.
I'm a fierce pursuit of this freedom in both Raw Food and Titanium. As for Alexia in Titanium, her actions have a lot to do with the urge to die. It's the exact opposite of the way I portrayed Justin in Eat Raw.
Justin's way of accepting emotions is a two-way street. She has someone with whom she shares unconditional love and desire, beyond any gender or any form of sex, because they need each other. This kind of love that comes from mutual need is the basis for having sex and is also a very positive point for me.
In the end, Justin did not bite Adrian, but bit himself. Somehow, Adrian wasn't intimidated by this either.
"Eat Raw"
The way Alexia, the protagonist of Titanium, accepts emotions is one-way. Although she had a special connection to her car, it was nothing more than a car.
For her, it was still a way to distance herself from her own humanity. However, after she decided to become Adrian, she began to develop a desire for Vincent, which was the first time in her life that she began to feel the presence of humans. It's incredibly free.
This freedom is culminated in scenes where firefighters dance to the Song "Lighthouse" by the band Future Islands. For me, the scene is both full of desire and elegant. The dancing Alexia is really beautiful, very elegant. She began to feel something beyond her emotion, and that was her desire for Vincent.
Q: You said that nightmares have inspired you a lot. I'm curious, do you have any stories that you don't dare to write, or stories that you're not ready for?
Giulia di Cuno: A story I dare not tell? Maybe there's a story like this, maybe they've been in my previous films, maybe I'll make a movie about it later.
Q: Alexia, Justin, Adrian, the names of these characters appear not only in Raw Eat, but also in Titanium. Is the repetition of the name intentional?
Giulia Di Kuno: Yes, these characters are the foundation of everything. I started building the character of Justin from "The Girl First Grows Up". Garrance Mariglier played the role (her role in the movie Titanium is also called Justin), and she was my close companion and the muse I admired.
In fact, the name Justin in Titanium originally derives from the Marquis Sade's novel Justin or the Misfortune of Virtue. It tells the story of a young girl who learns her desires in a very twisted way. For me, the irony of the novel is very funny, and it is still very advanced and avant-garde today.
As for Alexia, honestly, I'm just looking for a name with the letter "X." I need an "X" to symbolize a lot of things, it gives a sense of blasphemy and at the same time has a modern feel.
I wanted to use this name to show her continuous degeneration and decadence. And as the film progressed, Alexia was actually going downhill. This is the mind I want to express through "X".
Q: What about Adrien? In Both Raw Eat and Titanium, this is a neglected character. Alexia in Titanium disguises herself as the missing Adrian.
Giulia di Cuno: Adrian is like a forgotten hero, a hero behind the scenes. In "Raw Eating," he's a warm light in the movie. He was a strong man: honest, straightforward, and loving. It's a character that I enjoy writing with. Adrian, who never appeared in "Titanium", seems to be a melancholy greeting to Adrian in "Raw Eating".
In Titanium, Adrian is a man who has been missing for years, perhaps dead, but he is reborn in his relationship with Alexia. I love the idea of giving Adrian from Raw Foods a new lease on Titanium. Like you mentioned, my characters all have the same name because I think they're all variations of the same person.
Q: Which character do you most identify with?
Giulia di Kouno: I think that's Justin from my short film,"The Girl Grows Up." In addition, Adrian in "Raw Eating" has a lot of shadows on me. As for the other characters... I think they all represent part of me because they make me laugh. "The First Girl Grows Up" is a teen comedy, and Adrian contributed a lot of great laughs in "Raw Eating". He's funny and cheerful, and I can empathize with people who make me laugh. That's my sense of humor!
"The First Growing Girl"
Q: Speaking of humor, there are obviously more antics in Titanium than in Raw Foods. I'm curious how you see the comedic elements of your films, especially when you present violence, gore, and comedic elements together.
Giulia di Kouno: I've got elements from body horror, comedy, thriller, and drama in Titanium. I'm good at these areas and find it nice to put them together.
Humor helps vent and ease when stories are too heavy and dark: Laughter helps to see things from a good perspective, and it's very healthy. That's how I look at humor: let the tension take a breather.
It's also a great way to resonate between the characters and the audience. This is especially important for Alexia, who at the beginning of the film is a character who is unlikely to empathize with the audience because she does not exude any emotion.
The killing scene in the house was clearly a comedic scene, and after this dark scene, we know why she went crazy. Her body was constantly telling her, "You're pregnant," and the fact that she couldn't control it caused her to deviate from normal rules of conduct. Her body structure had changed and she couldn't take it anymore. It is because of this that Alexia first showed her human side in the film.
You can sympathize with her thoughts, but her pregnant, tired body makes her powerless to kill everyone because there are so many people in this house. I'd say that in this scene you can see how the comedic feel of the body affects her thoughts.
Q: Have there been any recent events that have inspired you or inspired you? Have you ever gone to see some new films?
Giulia di Kouno: When I make movies, I don't watch movies. Because I don't want to stray from my own thoughts, I don't want what I could have said and what I wanted to do to be disturbed. But I recently made up for some movies I missed before.
I watched Thomas Winterberg's The Alcohol Project and I always look forward to his new work. Winterberg is good at portraying the grey areas in relationships, which is what I want to do. He would manage to get the audience above their preconceived notions about a character at the beginning of the film.
Alcohol Project
For me, as a director, it's a hard thing to do: to keep them emotionally connected to the character without the audience knowing exactly how to position it. I think he's really brave and smart.
I wasn't disappointed with The Alcohol Project because the dance in the last act brought me to tears. It's so elegant and beautiful, and what makes Max Mickelson so brilliant in this film is because he used to be a dancer. I really like this movie.
Q: Jean Cocteau once said, "Film directors make the same films over and over again because we are constantly expressing our obsession with art." What do you think is an idea or image that you keep thinking about at work, and will you reinterpret it in a different way each new work?
Giulia di Kuno: Anyway, for me I'm constantly "peeling my skin off" . I believe that you can only reach yourself by going through a few more times to fade your skin. I have a very existential way of life. I feel like life is just molting, maybe a trauma, or something else that makes me try to get closer to my heart.