Grading on a Curve (or, NEON vs A24) (Patreon)

I just finished grading a ton of term papers and research proposals, which has thrown me a bit behind on writing duties. But there is an ironic element to this since, while watching these two "elevated horror" entries back to back, I felt as though they exemplified the problems I so often have with student papers. I don't think I typically bring those kinds of evaluative criteria to the cinema with me. But I think it says something about the films themselves, how they each display a great deal of potential but just aren't as fully formed as they should be.

TOO MUCH: Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021)

From post-Alamo hipsters NEON comes 2021's Palme d'Or winner. I mentioned on Letterboxd a few weeks back that I was shocked to reread my review of Ducournau's debut Raw, because I had almost no recollection of it whatsoever -- the movie, or my review. Leaving aside the degree to which this is more attributable to my encroaching dotage than to Raw itself, I can certainly say I won't forget having seen Titane.

If this were a student paper, I would write in the margins, in very large print, BE MORE SPECIFIC. There's no denying that Titane is chock-full of ideas. But Ducournau moves so quickly from one shocking / sexy set-piece to the next. It's not just that this leads to narrative confusion. (Why is she a serial killer? Just 'cause it's bad-ass?) This approach almost completely eliminates the emotional stakes of the film. We get the tragic backstory of Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), her post-accident disabilities, her medical-cyborg embodiment, and her fraught relationship with her dad (Bertrand Bonello). 

But Ducournau is clearly more invested in slick carnage, the sort of splatterpunk approach to visual storytelling you find in Shinya Tsukamoto or earlyish Park Chan-wook. That's all fine and good. But then, in Titane's back half, we are clearly supposed to become emotionally invested in her cathexis onto surrogate father Vincent (Vincent Lindon), the way the two of them form a pseudo-familial bond based on common trauma. By this point, though, I found Titane to be more of a theoretical exercise, a disquisition on the post-human, post-gender condition of contemporary bodies. After all, if Alexia was indeed knocked up by a tricked-out Cadillac, then Titane has ventured so far beyond David Cronenberg / Donna Haraway territory as to render its own primary concerns almost moot. For a film so fixated on sleek metallic impenetrability, Titane is defined by an unnerving conceptual porosity.

NOT ENOUGH: Lamb (Valdimar Jóhannsson, 2021)

And from A24, we have Lamb, a suitably atmospheric entry from Iceland. Granted, to turn on a camera in Iceland and not simply discover atmosphere you'd have to be actively working against it, but Valdimar Jóhannsson does make admirable use of the fjords and steaming hot springs that surround the protagonists' isolated sheep farm. To its credit, Lamb is not afraid to be slow, or to let the landscape do the talking a lot of the time. Audiences who found Midsommer maddening are likely to demand actual refunds with this one.

I wish Lamb were better. If it were a student's assignment, I would mark it with the words LESS DESCRIPTION, MORE ANALYSIS. Essentially, Jóhannsson sets up a set of supernatural parameters and just follows them along to their logical conclusion, plodding along without ever articulating why we should find the scenario compelling in the first place. Granted, when about 1/5 of your film consists of loving close-ups of Noomi Rapace, it might begin to feel that you need very little else. But any potential conflict, such as the arrival of Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), brother of Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) and brother-in-law of Maria (Rapace), is quickly resolved. 

I suppose one could argue that the real antagonist in Lamb is time. The problem of Ada the sheep-child will need to end one way or another, and when it does, it's simultaneously preposterous and, well, shoulder-shruggingly predictable. There's so little mutton on Lamb that I found myself considering possible allegorical interpretations while sitting in front of it. It accommodates pretty much anything you want to throw at it: religious angle (Ada as Holy Child), post-partum psychosis (Ada is the distraught Maria's fantasy projection), even a tin-eared stab at immigration or cross-racial adoption ("that's not a child, it's an animal," etc.) But really, why was I applying possible readings like so many dollops of mint jelly? 

Waiter, this is not what I ordered.