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Do you love cars? I mean, do you really love cars? Special guest Tee Franklin joins Jeremy, Ben, and Emily to discuss Palm d'Or winner Titane (2021).
A podcast that holds horror to standards horror never agreed to. Hosts Jeremy Whitley, Ben Kahn, Emily Martin and guests watch, read, listen to, and check out movies, tv shows, comics, books, art and anything else from the horror genre and discuss it through a progressive lens. We'll talk feminism in horror, LGBTQ+ issues and representation in horror, racial and social justice in horror, disability and mental health/illness in horror, and the work of female and POC directors, writers, and creators in horror.
We're the podcast horror never agreed to take part in.
Titane w/ Tee
[00:00:00]
Jeremy: Good evening, and welcome to Progressively Horrified. Tonight, we're talking about the 2021 gory and bizarre French body horror, standout "Tee-tahn." I am your host, Jeremy Whitley, and with me tonight, I have a panel of cinephiles and Cenobites. First, they're here to invade your house and find queer content in all of your favorite movies, my co-host, and comic book writer, Ben Kahn. Ben, how are you tonight?
Ben: And so, we come to the natural end point of the Fast and Furious franchise.
Jeremy: Oh, okay. That's so bothersome. Uh, we picked her up at the spooky crossroads of anime and sexy monster media it's co-host and comic artist, [00:01:00] Emily Martin. How are you tonight, Emily?
Emily: You know, watching this movie reminds me why I signed up for this in the first place, because I used to watch just fucking bananas ass movies in college, and I would have people around, some of them were not signed up for it, but you know, we were sharing space. So, they would have to look at the film. Now I know I will have people to talk to that are more or less willing to talk to- to me about this, so thank you also it's "ti-tane".
Ben: No never let Jeremy stop trying to pronounce French words. It's the greatest.
Jeremy: And our special guest tonight, the writer and creator of the comic books Bingo Love and Juke Joint, as well as the writer of Harley Quinn: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour series at DC comics, it's comics and TV writer, Tee Franklin. So glad you're here. How are you?
Tee: Uh, well.... I was good before watching this movie and, you know, I need therapy and a lot of weed to [00:02:00] deal with what I saw, but other than that, I'm good.
Jeremy: All I know is after watching this, somebody needs therapy.
Ben: All you listeners at home, you might know that this movie is French and you might think, oh, so it's a French language movie.
No, this movie is FREEEEEEeeeeench. Let's see what's more French? The washing down pills with wine or the second shirtless firemen dance party?
Jeremy: Let me do some basics here. This is written directed by Julia Ducournau, who her other movie is called Raw. It is also a horror movie. It is also extremely fucked up. There is also substantial body horror in that movie, as there is in this one.
It stars, Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, and Garance Marillier. And as far as IMDb is concerned, this movie "follows a series of unexpected crimes after a father is reunited with his son who has been missing for 10 years." And then defines titanium, which the French word for titanium is titane, and it says a [00:03:00] metal highly resistant t'heat and corrosion with high tensile strength alloys, which has nothing to do with this movie is actually about.
Tee: That's a lie. That's a whole lie.
Ben: I like to bag on IMDB's frankly, terrible movie descriptions...
Tee: For real.
Ben: I don't know what I would have put down for that. Like what what was IMDb supposed to do? Just like an audio file of somebody screaming?
Emily: I just, I would put "Buckle up..."
Ben: Yeah. "Buckle up, shrug emoji. ?????" Come on, IMDb.
Tee: I had to see what this was about because I was confused and I read that sentence. I was like, but
that's not what th- that... we missed like 45, 55, 65 minutes! That's not that!
Jeremy: Apparently that's the only stuff that they had released about the movie prior to it showing at Cannes. That was the only thing they said about the movie. And then they showed this at the Cannes film festival and it won the Palme d'Or.
Ben: I [00:04:00] enjoy just the low-key absurdity of just anyone buying for any second that this main character Alexia is this lost child. Like they do not even share the same skin tone. There is no common features between this person she is impersonating and her.
Emily: Yeah. She's taking advantage of desperation, certainly, which is something that like, I was not expecting as like a very strong plot element in this film. And I say strong because it's there a lot.
This is what I love about non-American cinema is that they're like, we're going to throw some crazy shit together and we're not going to follow any sort of pacing...
Jeremy: This movie is the most French-ass shit I've ever seen because like it's like, yes, a homicidal woman can be a great son [00:05:00] to an insane fire chief. They can share a great bond as father and son. And it's what?
Emily: For the sake of our listeners, there was an exchange between Ben and me on DMs where I was like, " I know nothing about this film." And so, Ben says, "'There's less car fucking that I was expecting' is a thought that just went through my head," is what Ben told me.
"Just basically the only thing I knew about the movie." And I say, "Fucking in cars, people, fucking cars, or cars fucking each other?" And Ben says, "Yes." I then post a screenshot of this to some of my friends and like a private discord we have. And I'm like, this is all I know about this movie I'm going to watch this week for the show.
And then I am like, oh no, do not watch this. Once upon a time, a girl fucked a car and got car pregnant and then killed everyone she knew and then ran away and became a firefighter.
Ben: Yeah! That should have been the IMDb description!
Emily: Yes.
Ben: Nailed it.
Emily: Yeah. So that's what I was like. This is what this is about. It is not as [00:06:00] fun as it sounds.
Ben: No. I thought it was like murder and horny for cars. I'm going to kill whoever I have to get access to sexier and sexier cars.
And once again, I was completely fucking wrong. It's a movie about lying and being a firefighter and body dysphoria. A lot and lot of body dysphoria!
Tee: From the beginning, I was a little pissed because it was ableist as hell, you could tell from what I read while watching the first few minutes, I'm like, okay, so this kid is autistic. This kid is humming. It's got this little thing with cars and now the kid is kicking the back of the chair and the kid takes off the seatbelt and then boom, it was an accident. So, I'm like, okay, we got a little autism going on. All right. All right. But it just turned into... and now we got this titanium metal thing in their head.
So, it's essentially a [00:07:00] disabled villain who is going around killing. And it's like, damn, can I watch a movie without disabled people being a bad guy? �Cause I don't go around killing people and fucking cars. Like
Jeremy: I was waiting for the point where they connected those two and like a definitive way where they were like, yeah, because of the autism or because of the titanium plate, then blah, blah, blah.
But they don't do that. And it left me like wondering like, is this intentionally ableist or is it just weird as fuck? And they just threw a lot of things into the pot and were like... "And then this, and also this, and then this"
Ben: Car sex connects to the pregnancy and that's about where things connecting to other things ends.
Jeremy: So, we mentioned the first scene is she's a kid, she's in a car she's humming along with the like car sounds rather than the radio.
And it's irritating her dad and her dad rather than saying [00:08:00] anything about it or talking to her like a human being just keeps turning up the radio and then she starts kicking his seat and then takes off her seatbelt. And the dad, in a real fucked up move is like, " You got to put your seatbelt back on," and just turns his ass all the way around in the seat to reach for her.
And it's like, how is crashing the car going to make this better? And of course, they do crash the car. She gets an intense head injury and has to have a titanium plate put into her head. She has a permanent, like snail shaped scar on the side of her head. As soon as she gets out, she skips to the parking lot and starts tenderly kissing the car in the parking lot as a small child. A lil' weird to begin with, but... yeah, it's just going to get weirder.
Because we jump forward several years and Alexia is working a car show as a model dancer. She's signing autographs. And I put in the notes that she was fucking this car, not realizing that five minutes later that was going to take a whole different meaning because [00:09:00] she is like, hardcore grinding the front of this car, like really working it at this show.
Emily: It's Guy Fieri's convertible or not "convertible". It's Guy Fieri's... it's not actually...
Guy Fieri's lowrider
Emily: Yeah, but it's- it's covered in flame decals.
Ben: That's Land Force One of Flavortown.
I feel like I should have - cause I know car shows are things, like booth babes are people and an occupation that exists. And I feel like I theoretically should have mentally put together there, like, yes, there would, that would be an occupation to model at car shows.
But my only first I was wait, is party girl in Fast and Furious as a full-time job? Do they have a Fast and Furious Party Girl Union?
Emily: In Europe? They probably do.
Tee: Mm-hmm.
Emily: Yeah, they have government support for sex workers.
Ben: That would explain how John Cena is able to put that party on so fast. They got the whole union together.
Jeremy: Okay. So, in what will turn out to be...
Ben: I can't promise that's gonna [00:10:00] be my last...
Jeremy: ...one of a long series of weird left turns she- she finishes the car show and goes to go wash up in their I guess, public shower that the models use at this car show. Next to an overly friendly girl named Justine, who is de- seems determined to become her friend and more. But instead, Alexia just ends up getting her hair caught in Justine's nipple piercing?
Emily: Don't you hate that when that happens?
Ben: I do feel like in a different movie, that's a very adorable and super queer meet-cute.
Tee: Yes.
Jeremy: Yeah. It's the wildest meet-cute. And I was like well, is this where we're going with this? It is not where we're going with this.
Tee: We definitely not.
Ben: Nope.
Jeremy: Yeah, 'cause this is a surprisingly long scene of her trying to get her hair untangled from this other girl's nipple piercing.
Emily: Prepare for the word 'surprisingly long scene' a lot.
Jeremy: And then we moved to a man following her out of the place, back to her car in what seems like it's going to be an inciting incident for a suspense horror thing.
This man is like trying [00:11:00] to get to her. He, she gets in her car and does open up the window to talk to him. He wants, he says he wants a signature, but then he wants to kiss her and wants her to marry him. And uh, is forcing her to kiss him when she grabs his car and grabs his head and pulls it in to kiss him further and then jams her hairpin through his ear and into his brain where he proceeds to die right there.
And I was like, oh, that's the kind of movie this is. It's maybe also not the kind of movie this is. She loads, uh, loads his body into the car. Maybe disposes of it? I'm not sure because we don't get to see that part.
Tee: And she kills so easily so was it like, is this her first, her 50th?
Jeremy: Unclear.
Ben: Apparently, she's I don't think she's really disposing of the bodies cause they find it the next morning. I think she's just like, going to, apparently, the south part of whatever they're talking about, and just dumping a body like fucking in a parking lot or whatever...
Jeremy: [00:12:00] Put that shit in the Seine.
Emily: Yeah. She's, she's putting a few of the bodies in the river, I'm pretty sure.
Ben: But again, like not weighing -
Tee: Well, she's sacrificing them to her car god.
Ben: - not weighing them down. They're just floating on.
Emily: Yeah. I think sacrificing them to the car god, that's- that actually makes a lot more sense now with what happens next.
Tee: Yeah.
Jeremy: Yeah. She now has a brain juice and vomit on her from this man she has killed. So, she goes back and...
Ben: Don't ya just hate when you get brain juice on your favorite tank top?
Jeremy: She goes back into the shower again. And there is a loud knock at the door to the showers and she goes out to go check it out. There's nobody there, but as she opens the door, there is a car? And the car has been knocking at the door and shines its headlights at her. This is the same fire emblazoned lowrider that she was, uh, fucking the hood of earlier.
Tee: Mm-hmm.
Ben: You know this isn't an American movie because if it was "day bow bow" would be playing during this scene.
Jeremy: So, the car [00:13:00] is coming to seduce her. Apparently, it is uh, shining lights at her and working its hydraulics a little bit. She climbs in naked, ties her arms up in the seatbelts. Yeah. And proceeds to let the lowrider just go to work on her? As far as I can tell, this is just working off the like impact of the hydraulics like, I guess she's just...
Emily: I wasn't sure if it was her effort or if it was the hydraulics,
Ben: Those are some fucking Kegels if it's her.
Emily: I mean.
Tee: What is she on the gear shaft? Like
Jeremy: She's in the back seat!
Emily: No, she's in the front seat. I saw the wheel.
Ben: Yeah. I thought it was the backseat too. It took me awhile to realize those were seatbelt straps. And my first thought was like, oh, a special S&M car. I don't remember that episode of Pimp My Ride, but good for you Xzibit.
Tee: Like I was thinking, okay, are we going the Christine, like the little car? The little demon possessed [00:14:00] car? But no, it was not.
Jeremy: This car is possessed by a sex demon apparently,
Tee: But where did he leave? Like he just left. Like, why didn't the car follow her? Be like bring that, bring that booty back.
Jeremy: So...
Ben: That car is a fucking deadbeat car dad. Does nothing to help raise his car kid.
Jeremy: So, I was reading an interview with this director about this movie, and she was very adamant that this car is a she because cars are feminine in French but specifically this car is feminine and it is a it is consistent with the logic of the movie, she says.
Ben: As in, there's none?!
Jeremy: The internal logic of the film, which is it's wild. But like she was talking about how she took pains to portray this as a consenting sexual act between two entities, which I guess like the car is clearly into it. The car invites her in. But like-
Tee: What made the car come the fuck alive?
Ben: [00:15:00] And
Emily: Her mind.
Ben: It's so much weirder that it's the only w- that it only happens the one time and only this car, like it's not a recurring feature of the world or her mind. It is a, as far as we know a completely one-off occurrence.
Tee: She did it in a firetruck, that didn't happen.
Jeremy: Yeah. Her dance on the hood, I guess, is just so hot that it brings the car to life.
Emily: So, it's how do you know when the car climaxes too?
Jeremy: Well, they take great pains in the next, the next shot as she is lying in bed to pan across her body. And you can see that her panties are oil stained...
Emily: Actually, it's like... I mean
Ben: Gahhhhaghhhghghghhh...
Tee: Her pH balance is all the way the fuck off. Okay.
Emily: Yeah. That's a very good point.
Ben: Damn Optimus prime doesn't wear condoms. That's what I learned from this movie.
Tee: No... that was just... [00:16:00] Imagine having black guck coming out your snatch. What?! I would be like "Doctor!" "9-1-1!" "Help me, please!"
Jeremy: When we were talking to Morgan about Candyman the other day, and Morgan was talking about like, as a nurse people don't come in when things are wrong, they come in way after they should've come in.
Ben: I'll give it to Candyman. Like in Candyman, that is a self-employed artist in America who knows what his fucking health insurance situation is.
She's in France, what's her excuse.
Emily: And her dad's a doctor. Like I certainly would not want my dad to be like, a gynecologist on me. Absolutely not never in a million years.
Jeremy: That's exactly what her mom recommends. The next day, she's like, "My stomach hurts. I feel weird." And her mom is like, "Have your dad check you out."
And then she lays down on what seems to be the dinner table. And uh, her dad like presses down on some things on her stomach [00:17:00] and is like, yeah, you're fine.
Ben: Her dad clearly hates it as much as she does.
Emily: Yeah. As much as we all do.
Tee: It's like she got pregnant and... ta-dow.
Emily: Yeah. That's another thing about this movie is that apparently when you get car pregnant, it goes real fast.
Tee: Real fast.
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. And how does it...
Tee: Why was her stomach gurgling? I've been pregnant a bunch of times, my stomach ain't gurgle! It gurgles when it's hungry. But why was her stomach "grr-rrr-rrr"?
Emily: Aw, maybe that was the motor.
*laughs*
Grrrr!
Vrrrrommm!
Jeremy: Does a baby motor need an oil change before it's born? Is just...
Ben: No, but you do need to change the wiper fluid.
Jeremy: Okay. So, this is also the first time on the TV here that we hear about Adrian, the boy who disappeared 10 years ago and his parents are still looking for him. So that will come back later.
Currently she is now going out on a date with Justine who I guess they did have a meet-cute when she got her hair caught in her nipple piercing, because now they're hooking up. And uh, she [00:18:00] objects, rightfully, to Alexia trying to rip her nipple off by like biting her nipple piercing and just repeatedly pulling.
Ben: It confused me cause it's I thought your thing was like, cars. Is it now just all metal?
Tee: She started biting and pulling and she's like "Yo, chill." But she wasn't paying attention. She had to like get aggressive with it and she runs away. Has her first bout of morning sickness, which we didn't know. But then she goes back to her. And I'd have been like "Biiiiitch?! I like my nipples."
Ben: Justine, what are you doing girl? Why you giving her a second date?
Jeremy: She then takes her back her house.
Ben: If she didn't like the nipple biting, she's sure not gonna like what comes next.
Jeremy: Yeah! So, Alexia decides to take a pregnancy test. Guess what? She's pregnant.
Her stomach has also gotten weirdly hard she's notices. So, she's takes this pregnancy test and when it comes back positive, her [00:19:00] reaction to this is to take this this, like foot-long hairpin that she already stabbed the dude to death with...
Tee: And didn't fucking clean. Didn't fucking clean it! Dirty bitch...
Emily: Yes.
Ben: Uh, the, attempted abortion scene. One of all, most of the scenes that are very uncomfortable to watch.
Tee: I was like, I'm out.
'Cause look. there are easier ways. Bitch. Throw yourself down the steps. I'm not damaging my box.
Jeremy: The point where oil starts leaking out of her when she does it too. And she does not seem to acknowledge this at all.
Emily: How does nobody smell it? Like motor oil smells.
Ben: Oh, that would be a... that's a mix.
Emily: Yes, but like, it's going to smell no matter what. This whole scene, I was focusing more on the fact that she used TP to gag her mouth while she was like experiencing pain, which I'm like use a fu- use a cloth, you dumb ass.
Tee: And it was only like three squares. So [00:20:00] what is it fucking holding in?!
Emily: I know! Like it's just going to disintegrate in her mouth. Anyway, this is what I had to focus on in order to not completely absorb the horrible shit she was doing to herself. So
Ben: I was having terrible thoughts. Like, you have too much motor oil. And also, I'm worried you're losing too much motor oil.
Jeremy: And this the follow-up to this is, she goes back outside and Justine's like, "Oh yeah, were you pregnant?" And then they start making out aggressively long enough for her to set Justine up for an ear stabbing, but Justine doesn't sit still enough. So, she ends up jabbing this thing through her cheek instead. And Justine's reaction basically, just to be like what just happened? What?
Ben: There is no discretion shot. You just see this thing going through one side of her, one part of her face and then coming out the other.
Jeremy: She repeatedly stabs and beats this girl to death because she can't manage to kill her [00:21:00] effectively at which point Justine's two flat mates, just walk in naked and see that now she has killed Justine and Alexia decides that she has to go ahead and kill both of them as well. And she kills the male flat mate by knocking him down and then shoving a stool through his mouth and out the back of his head and then sitting on it for a moment so she can just gather herself.
They do have a discretion shot there. You don't see her do that. They do not. Stop it from making horrible noises.
Tee: Oh God.
Ben: Also again, at this point in the movie, yeah. We've seen her kill one person, but for us as viewers, that was a completely justified kill. That is cathartic for us to see. Yeah, it's been impli- heavily implied that she has killed other people.
But once again, we don't know the circumstances and if they were justified, this is really the moment where the movie goes, oh no, she's just straight up an unrepentant serial killer.
Tee: [00:22:00] Usually right. When you watch Criminal Minds, CSI it's a mommy issue, it's a daddy issue. Somebody abused.
We don't have no... it's like the bitch just felt like waking up and start killing people.
Like if it was tow trucks... okay... You taking my man! I�mma kill you. I can get that. But what I don�t... I don't...
Ben: I think you really hit the nail on the head Tee, when we were talking earlier about the ableism in this movie, because without any of that, all we're left with is, oh, she's was autistic coded, and then she was in a bad accident and physical trauma made her an evil killer. And that's the only message the movie leaves us with without any of that other context. And that's a bad message!
Emily: Yeah, that's bad.
Jeremy: Oddly though, at no point, is she not the protagonist of this movie. Like she is she is straight up evil. She is serial killing people left and right that we have no evidence deserve it, but this movie [00:23:00] really sticks with her and follows her throughout all of this as if like we're definitely going to be on her side or with her through it.
Just a very strange and I guess very French choice. but she, okay. So, after she stools, this man and then sits on his face-
Emily: That's a bad turn of phrase
Jeremy: -sits on his face in the least sexual way possible.
Emily: "Stools him" and "then sits on his face"?
Jeremy: That's what happens. That is what happens through his face, through the back of his head. She chases the female flat mate upstairs and proceeds to knock aggressively on the door at which point somebody else comes up behind her and is like, "Can I help you?" This is the fourth naked flat mate who genuinely- like he is, he's much larger than her, but seems like a nice guy.
Ben: Are they? Are they all flat mates? Cause at this point I assumed it was a sex party.
Emily: No, they live together, but they're all like, banging cause it's France. What else you do?
Jeremy: Her [00:24:00] reaction in this scene though, which is when she sees this guy, she's like, how many of you are there?
He's like, "Oh, it's just the four of us." And she's like, "Oh, okay." And then hugs him. And she's, he's like, "are you okay?" And she's like, "I'm just so tired." And then kills him.
Ben: That was a good move on the hug. Not because it made the kill easier, but because that dude looked like a real good hugger,
Emily: I know!
Ben: Great Hugs.
Emily: I know I had such high hopes for him, even though it was not in the cards. I knew it wasn't, like intellectually. I knew, but I was like please. Maybe he like gets away. Cause he's just, the movie shows him as so sweet. And the way that he like stands there, like every other dude in this movie looks like a douche bag, except for this guy.
Tee: Genuinely concerned and, you know, she's going through her pregnancy tiring syndrome, which we do, when we pregnant, we are very tired.
Jeremy: And this baby has tires as far as we know.
Ben: Mm-hmm. I thought she was go'n [00:25:00] give birth to a car.
The tire, like it doesn't grow its tires until around seven or eight.
Emily: Yeah. I was just, I was a bit disappointed that the baby was not like a Volkswagen beetle, but
Ben: I was honestly expecting again, like a tiny Mercedes with human arms and legs.
Emily: After this weird, like slice of life fucking
Jeremy: Honestly, you think a Cadillac lowrider would give birth to a Mercedes? Come on.
Emily: I mean...
Tee: She cheated! Duh, Jeremy! You ain't see all the cars in there? She probably fucked them up!
Emily: I just was, I was expecting her to drop just like a six-cylinder engine and have it be that like, I w- I
Tee: With all that motor oil? Like why the motor oil if it's not going to be a car, I feel like I've been bamboozled.
Emily: Well for a while I thought, maybe there's the possibility that this is just an infection that she got from banging the stick [00:26:00] shift and, maybe she, maybe there was more to it spoilers there isn't.
Jeremy: On hearing her attack the other guy, this girl decides this is my opportunity to run. Gets halfway down the stairs before Alexia tackles her and beats her and chokes her to death. And then she takes some of the evidence clearly not nearly enough evidence to cover up this crime and drags it back home with her, throws it in a barrel in her garage, pours a bunch of gasoline or kerosene on top of it, and lights it up. I am unclear what happens here and I w- I want to know if you guys have the same take on this. This fire is very big and seems like there's a very good chance it's going to burn down this house, but we don't see that. What we do see is her go upstairs to her parents' room, where her dad sees her open the door.
She then, like, takes the key out of the, their side of the door and then locks it from the outside and takes off. Did she burn her parents alive?
Ben: Yeah. A hundred percent. Absolutely. [00:27:00] Yes. A hundred percent.
No, she set her house on fire on purpose and then locked her parents inside.
Tee: Yes. But the girl who got down the steps, did she really die? Because later on they said...
Ben: She, yeah, no, she totally got away. We never see Alexia get her. As far as we know, that's what makes it impossible for her to cover her tracks or even get away with it.
Emily: It gets the composite sketch.
Ben: Like now there's like a witness. And so, I'm going to be like, yeah, my roommate, Justine who like said she was bringing over this girl, she danced with fucking just killed everyone. Oh
Tee: my God. Oh my God. As a sex worker, there's so many movies, TV shows, books, whatever that sex workers are killed by a serial killer. And that just like really pissed me off because I'm like, yes, it does happen. But it doesn�t always happen. [00:28:00] That was like a real lazy ass trope for me. If you want to kill, I don't know that, just, that, just that part really didn't sit well with me. Cause I'm like, damn. Yeah.
Ben: At no point is Justine not just like sweet and flirty, nice, and she gets a fucking hair pin in the face for it.
Emily: She's very understanding too. Like she's super understanding! Like, girl almost tries to rip her tit off...
Jeremy: Twice.
Emily: Twice
Ben: Too understanding, too accommodating. Clearly a fatal flaw.
Emily: Yeah. RIP Justine. But yeah, that whole massacre of them felt like it was one of those tropes of punishing debauchery.
Jeremy: We now have, what is maybe the worst. She goes to the train station and sees the composite sketch of her there and is like, oh shit, I got to get away from this place where there's a whole bunch of cops. Hold on. Here's this picture of this uh, Adrian kid and what he probably looks like, you know, the 10 years later now I bet I could [00:29:00] kind of look like him.
So, she proceeds to go to the bathroom, cut off all of her hair, so she's going to pull a switcheroo here. So, she binds her breasts and her growing stomach. Cuts off her French lady mullet and oh, aggressively breaks her nose. She tries to punch it a few times and eventually. Fucking headbutts the toilet, which is the worst thing I've ever seen in a movie. That was the point where I had to pause it to go, "Ohhh!!!"
Ben: Like Black Widow had Black Widow break her own nose in a way where I almost, like, I didn't feel it. It didn't like, you feel Alexia breaking her own nose, every attempt at punching herself in the face, perpendicularly.
Emily: It's just like a seven-minute scene where she's trying to break her nose and figure out how to do it. And it doesn't, she breaks her nose on the sink. I just wanted to make that clear because toilet dirty.
Ben: I thought she [00:30:00] was just trying to not look like her composite sketch, because again, she looks nothing like the person she's impersonating, which again is really just, every character is aware of it, except for the person she's tricking.
And even he is like, "Yeah, I'm probably pretty fucking delusional."
Emily: Yeah. Okay. So, she gets this ACE bandage. We see a green cross in the background. I assume that she got the ACE bandage from the green cross. You can get makeup from the green cro- you don't have to fucking break your own nose. You can just do some contouring and then you're fine.
Come on.
Tee: Maybe she didn't learn it because she was busy fucking cars and that was her hobby.
Emily: She knew about makeup because she's a sex worker. She like was looking really good when she was humping the car at the show. Maybe
Ben: cause she was out on a date with the car.
Emily: Now, I guess I want to say one thing though, real quick, the dad seemed to know what was [00:31:00] going on. Her real dad, there was some telegraphing there really...
Jeremy: They're talking about people, like dead bodies on the TV, there was some like exchanging of looks between the two of them that like, they don't really go into anything, which this movie is a recurring thing that like, maybe it means something I dunno, onto the next thing.
So maybe he knows that she's a serial killer. He does seem to be aware of the fact that they're about to die. Yeah, definitely. She grabs that key, and he's like, oh shit. And it's too late.
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: The movie he's in is this movie about this dad who knows his daughter is bad vibes, but blames himself for it. And doesn't have any way to connect with her, but also doesn't know how to stop
her.
Emily: Yeah. There's that scene where she's coming back from the, her massacre in that "Never Give Up" shirt [00:32:00] that is the brightest like, this magenta, the magenta tone in this film was used artistically and it's very lovely, good job. But um, the dad there's this like long, I don't know if I should use the term pregnant pause, but but I did and he's like looking at her smoking and he's, and there's this like communication between them that is like this sort of mutual understanding, but then it goes nowhere. Then he dies. He dies in a fiery death.
Tee: But does he, did he like break out the back? Hop out the window? Cause they never mentioned that.
Ben: I believe that once she runs away, if he's survived, he putting zero effort into ever looking for her.
Jeremy: But good. She's gone. Thank God. Now I don't have to deal with that anymore. So, uh, okay.
So, this is where we meet Vincent Legrand. It is a difficult scene to follow because suddenly we're following a different person. He is charging into the police station here. He is uh, being told that his missing son, Adrian has shown [00:33:00] back up and he immediately accepts that this is Adrian before ever even seeing Alexia in her Adrian costume and broken nose.
They say of course we'll need a DNA test. And he's like, you don't think I'd recognize my own son after 10 years?
Ben: And hasn't even seen him and hasn't even seen her, or I'm a little unsure about what pronouns to use this movie when it's always uses, she/her for the character. But it's also, like this movie is transmasc as fuck.
Jeremy: Yeah. There is no indication that she identifies at all as Adrian at any point. But she does continue to bind her stomach and breasts throughout and to bothering results. She is - it is really painful and bad.
Ben: The character of Vincent that I find really interesting uh, because as we learn you know, he's in this very [00:34:00] physical environment and he's captain at a fire station.
And he is abusing steroids to try to be, to try to regain his, like, physical strength as he ages. And I found it really interesting because we so, associate themes of body dysphoria with uh, trans themes and narratives. And I thought that was a really interesting look at how even cis-gender people can still experience body dysphoria.
Emily: Yeah. I mean, I wish it was better at showing that, but I mean, it was like in terms of visual, like in terms of I wish it was better set up socially for this movie, but the visually it really did evoke the body dysphoria experience.
Ben: Yeah, this is, yeah. This is a man who feels like he should be one way and despite all his work, can't get there. And unfortunately, the thing he's fighting in this particular instance is time, which can't [00:35:00] be beat.
Emily: Yeah.
Jeremy: Yeah. The closest they get to actually discussing this is at one point she does walk in on him injecting himself and she says, are you sick? And he says, no, I'm just old.
Ben: I thought this was one thing that the movie actually did a really good job of communicating non-verbally cause we have that scene early on when we first meet him, where he injects the steroids and then we see him attempting to do a pull up and do exercises and just how intensely frustrated he is not being able to do it.
So, I thought that was one aspect of his character or theme that the movie did a good job depicting.
Emily: Yeah. The firefighter, the fire brigade that is depicted in this film is the, let me look at my notes here. The sapeurs-pompiers which are it's the Paris Fire Brigade, which is kinda like a national guard. It's very militarized. Now. [00:36:00] Usually you have a lot more criteria for joining rather than just being the commandant's they, the them commandant, um, the captain's son. So, there's obviously some, sum'n going wrong, but this is a very like masculine I don't know how really homoerotic it is because in this film it is quite homoerotic, but it is a very masculine brotherhood culture.
Ben: Their whole reaction at the second shirtless dance party is "Ew! There's no femininity at boys time dance party!"
Tee: There was no women firefighters. It was just a Sausage Fest happening.
Emily: Yeah. And they were like, they were may- I may have seen a couple of them making out. I'm not sure. I
Tee: thought so too.
Emily: Yeah.
Ben: They had some big steel-factory-in-Simpsons work hard, play hard energy.
Tee: And they were definitely in trance by [00:37:00] Adrian's a dance.
Emily: Yeah. They were entranced and confused. Like some of them were like, what's going on. And some of them were like, okay, I ca- I like
Tee: Like, I was really ready for them to do the whole, take it off! Like throwing money. I- that's what I figured, but again, no.
Jeremy: I guess, thankfully they didn't cause that point then she starts taking things off. It would have been a real, real problem.
Ben: When Alexia is first put in that room. She's peering into the fire station and she's put in this child's bedroom. There's this really cool dinosaur robot, like on the side table and I don't have a point to make. It's just really cool. And I want it.
Emily: It's a really great, like, visual anchor for that space.
Jeremy: Yeah. Vincent loads Adrian, up into the car and starts taking him home and she seems to have second thoughts about this tries to [00:38:00] bail out of the car multiple times while they're driving back to the house. And he's no, I'm not going to let anybody hurt you, including me. Nobody's ever going to hurt you. Which leads to a lot of questions about what his relationship was with Adrian before Adrian ran away, which will never be answered.
Ben: Nope.
Jeremy: They show up at the house and Rayane is there who is, I guess Vincent's most trusted firefighter. Seems to be like a second command. I think he introduces himself as being like the conscience of the...
Emily: That's just his nickname.
Jeremy: Or, yeah, I, yeah. I don't know how you get that nickname. But he has brought, he's brought Vincent dinner because he knew Vincent was going to have a long drive home after picking up his son in whatever other part of France, they were in to go pick him up.
So, there's immediately like friction between him and Alexia as Adrian. Although Alexia as Adrian is not talking to anybody and not touching [00:39:00] anybody at this point. And I, it's hard to read whether it's her freaking out or whether it's her attempting to play PTSD as Adrian. It. It is very unclear.
We're getting no, she's not saying anything. We get no, like insight into her point of view on this.
Emily: And Vincent is not interested in doing any sort of therapy. He did some research, but that's it's no therapies. Just like you're mine now, the end.
Tee: Yeah. It was very, I get why she would, if I get why they would do the whole, I'm not going to speak because I've got this high-ass voice and it might give me away. So, I'm just not going to say a thing. I'm gonna act traumatized. I'm going to pull away. The way that the father was acting, it just really, it was given off abusive father vibes. Like it really was. I'm like no wonder why your son ran away. Like it just, he had, [00:40:00] it seemed like he had a lot of guilt.
And of course, when a mom comes in it was really like, okay, something just is it. Of course, we not going to know, but something just didn't sit well with me. In regards to the dad, he was real aggressive with Alexia.
Emily: That whole scene starts, they're like, dancing to "She's Not There" by the Zombies and he starts dancing really aggressively. And then he starts hitting her. And it's so like this movie does, if there's a direction, you think things are going to go, it's not going to go that direction.
Jeremy: I am entirely unclear on whether he is supposed to be abusive and has been abusive or he's on steroids. And so, he's a little bit like roided-out and antagonizing him, getting aggressive or he's just as fucked up as everybody else. And and this is just, cause it's clear that he has, he lost his son 10 years ago and has been guilt-ridden about this.
We don't [00:41:00] have any details on how and why this happened. And he is willing to accept at her word that Alexia is his son. Just because he wants to have his son back. It seems like his life has been just fucked since since he disappeared. And he has just decided that like, all right, he's back. That's all I need to know is that, you know, I have my son back and we can continue to have a great life.
Cause he is he is constantly sort of on edge and aggressive. When the firefighters start joking with Adrian and making fun of him at one point call him gay, uh, Vincent shows up and is yeah, I just need you to know that in this fucking troop, I am God, and this is my son. So that makes him Jesus. So don't fuck with my son or I'm going to end you. And I'm like, all right, I'm kind of with that. Although, everything else around, this is very bothersome.
Ben: There's a mosh [00:42:00] pit scene later. And again, at first, I was like, oh, okay. Are they associating? Like this rough housing with masculinity that Alexa is like finding comfort and solace in? And then the movie just veers into like fire truck, strip, tease dance, and everyone gets confused. I'm like, I don't know where you're going with this anymore movie. I never knew where you were going with this. You're doing your own thing.
Tee: I really thought they were going to expose her. I really thought like when they was carrying her up, I was like, oh, it's over now, but again, like Ben said... it's not. That would've been a perfect opportunity to be like, boom, expose the lie. As somebody who been pregnant, like a trillion billion times... everybody was giving Adrian hugs, and can't nobody tell that was a hard ass belly?
Ben: Which it's made of steel. It's made of metal. She is not just pregnant with car baby her torso is metal.
Jeremy: [00:43:00] Like at one point the dad is like, what's wrong with you and pulls back the hoodie that she's constantly wearing.
And her shirt is wet as if she's been lactating through these bandages. We will find out shortly that she lactates oil. And we see her, for the first time in a while, we see her unbind, her breasts and stomach, and you can see that she is doing permanent damage to herself. She is, she's got cuts from these bindings digging in there.
Her stomach is still growing and she has this like, horrible itch. And she starts scratching her stomach. Shortly thereafter she can put her finger through her skin and expose the like metal underneath it, which like... oh God.
Ben: This is where she scratches through her stomach. She then punches her own pregnant belly a whole bunch of times. And then we get the lactating motor oil reveal. [00:44:00] This is all one scene.
Yeah. This is all happening in a three-minute time span.
Tee: And I think her- her snatch is just leaking oil too, like... for an hour. And it's just okay. So, is that blood? She... Is she...? Did her motor oil break?
Emily: Someone could check under the hood.
Ben: Hey. Oh!
Jeremy: Imagine being a teenager who has not been through the proper amount of sex ed in watching this movie... Just not knowing what the fuck is real and what isn't. And
Emily: If you show a teenager, this movie, without context, you should go to jail.
Ben: Have you not heard the stories of the bees and the bee cars?
Emily: The Bumblebees? Thank you. We have also there's this weird ass scene, just randomly here where Vincent has doing like a training exercise and [00:45:00] sees a burnt child in a cabinet. And it's obviously a hallucination because Conscience doesn't see it. See it, and then
Jeremy: Yeah, cause it's in like a simulation they're in like a simulation room doing a...
Ben: I cannot emphasize enough with Conscience everything about his character is "I do not trust Alexia. I do not like Alexia." This movie is building up towards them having some kind of confrontation for most of its last hour and then it just doesn't happen.
Emily: Um, fucking Conscience gets...
Jeremy: I mean...
Emily: 'Asploded
Jeremy: Vincent is like,
Ben: he gets super exploded. Conscience is like, "Vincent's my dad." I don't know who this is, but this is my dad now.
Tee: It was a jealousy going on. It was, there was some major jealousy from that first act when he brought, like, what? How can you, like you said, how can you bring some random-ass motherfucker who ain't got no [00:46:00] training. They're like, "Oh, Hey, you're a firefighter." You been gone for 10 years, but I'm gonna make you a firefighter.
Jeremy: Alexia decides that she's going to run away and gets all the way to the bus station is then like, "Ah, maybe I won't." Comes back, seems to decide to kill Vincent, but finds Vincent passed out in the bathroom because Vincent has decided to double dose on the steroids.
I thought Vincent was dead at this point, but he's apparently just uh, in a, in a, a tiny coma. Uh, and she just kind of holds him for a while on the floor, in the bathroom and then we jump forward an indiscriminate amount of time.
Ben: I don't know much about steroid overdoses, but apparently, it's just something you can sleep off without any medical intervention.
Jeremy: You can sleep off with your eyes open without any kind of medical intervention.
Tee: Okay. But can we back up to that scene in the bus?
Emily: Yes, please.
Tee: Because that was just too much, like it was oh girl, the black girl is like thinking. I'm pretty sure she was [00:47:00] thinking that the person sitting across from her is a dude and is gonna say something, she just...
yeah, I kept waiting.
Tee: Bitch, what... And he's like, "I don't want no parts!"
Jeremy: I think, what, three or four broke-ass students in the back of the bus, or like harassing the one black girl sitting by herself on the bus. She's sitting across from Alexia who as far as anybody can tell is a dude. And they just exchanged several meaningful looks over this, over the black girl being harassed.
And then Alexia just gets the fuck off the bus.
Tee: Knowing that the first time we really meet her as an adult, she killed somebody who was harassing her. I was fine. I was waiting for her to...
Ben: but what I found the movie depicted well was the way that kind of like the street harassment we've seen and the way how you can't ignore it without it be like how quickly and it escalates, it always starts with something small. And then it always escalates. Like we saw [00:48:00] that with the guy that like followed her to the car I give me an autograph and I'll go, and then he's forcing himself on her. And man, it's I hated seeing that escalation knowing it was coming, but it was very realistically depicted.
Emily: Yeah. But that's the weird thing about these movies. And I say these movies, cause there's a lot of these non-American films that have these like very serious moments in them.
Ben: I thought you were talking about the widespread car pregnancy sub-genre.
Tee: I just don't understand why that scene made her get off the bus. Right. I would've just ignored it and kept it moving.
Ben: Like, what am I supposed to get? Like, I didn't know what I'm supposed to get. Like we've already seen her kill so many innocent people. Am I supposed to take away that she killed those people and then got off the bus or that she just abandoned that woman to her fate? Like...
Tee: She definitely abandoned her. She just said "Good luck."
Jeremy: Yeah. So, then she goes home and, uh, holds, uh, her unconscious [00:49:00] father figure after he has overdosed from steroids. And then we jump forward some amount of time, which is unclear and Alexia is going through this old wardrobe of Adrian's mom. Who's left, �sgone and puts on this like yellow dress and is like dancing around with it. And Vincent walks in and she seems to think he's going to be pissed off, but instead he's let me pull out my old picture book. There is you wearing this dress when you were 10. Nobody can tell me you're not my son. You just, you love this dress just like you did when you were 10, which is - again - kind of adorable.
Emily: I mean, yes, but like there's now, I have so many questions.
Ben: It's also very much highlighting the absurdity, showing these photos, how much Alexia looks nothing - NOTHING - like Vincent's child.
Tee: Nothing. That- that whole thing, like why does she even want to go wear a dress [00:50:00] anyway?
Ben: There's so much of this movie that is transmasc in vibes and theme.
And then there's scenes like this where she puts on a dress in this kind of forbidden way, like it be a transfemme narrative and it's once again, I'm like, I don't know what the, what the fuck the movie's going for or what it's trying to say.
Emily: Yeah. 'Cause I'm like, okay. So was their kid, was Adrian, queer, right?
Yeah. Was he queer, you know, did that have something to do with the loss or with the- with him going missing? Like was the, dad, like, super toxically masculine and then drove him away. Yeah, from what I saw, we saw the the mom wearing that dress while pregnant. And so that's why I thought that she was like, oh, this is a pregnancy dress.
So maybe I'll try on a pregnancy dress since I am pregnant with a Volkswagen beetle.
Tee: Why is why the dad keep the mom's clothes? If she left? It's just been sitting in the closet for 10 years and you ain't think to [00:51:00] chuck that shit? 'Cause if... Mom didn't think to take her shit?
Ben: She was doing the Marie Kondo. Neither the dress, the home, or the husband sparked joy.
Jeremy: The next scene that we get is this call that Adrian goes on with- with her dad, this woman calls the fire department to come help with a medical situation because her son is not opening the door to the room, the part of the house he lives in, but she doesn't want to go bother him because he likes his privacy, but thinks maybe he is seriously injured or dead.
They bust in and find him uh, overdosed and having vomited on the bed. Vincent starts working on him and sends Conscience out to the car to call for backup. And the old lady starts having a heart attack right there. And he has Adrian work on this old lady and she just starts like randomly beating on the chest at a [00:52:00] weird interval.
And he's like, "No, do it to 'The Macarena'. And then on the 'Hey Macarena' we'll breathe in to her."
Ben: What I love the most about that scene is that he doesn't just like hum to the Macarena. He knows the words of the Macarena.
Emily: It did sweep the nation,
Ben: it sweeped all the nations. It was a, it was a global sensation. Yeah.
Tee: That was just, I don't know. That whole scene just seemed so out of place, like, a- that's how you wanted to have Conscience confront Adrian? I don't know. I felt like you could've did it a better way than just with The Macarena.
Emily: I think it was weird because like now Alexia as Adrian has saved a life as opposed to taking one, and maybe this is a pivotal moment. We don't know cause there's so much shit going on in this movie.
Jeremy: Then she's smiling in the back of the van, which is the first time we've [00:53:00] seen her smile period. And she- she seems somewhat excited about this and this is where uh, Rayane, Conscience, uh, takes his opportunity to be like, "Hey, what's your deal?"
Ben: that whole scene just has this undercurrent of dark comedy. Just like, oh, we're trying to save this woman's son. Oh no, she's dying too!
And for one scene we have heartwarming, like character driven, dark comedy.
Tee: Yeah. I don't know. The father's response was like, now this bitch dying too? Like that shit, well, he didn't say that, but it was that was hilarious.
Emily: He might as well have said it. It was basically that he's like, "Oh, for fuck' sake." Like straight up.
He basically said that.
Ben: He was like time to make some lemons, lemonade out of lemons. Let's let's make this a father, son bonding though. This is going to be a learning experience. We're gonna save a life together.
Tee: "Can we go fishing, Dad? Please?"
Ben: " No. Suck on [00:54:00] that old lady's face."
Tee: Oh, my G- it was so gross. It was just like.
Jeremy: Ah, yeah. And so, what Rayane tries to tell Vincent about his son and Vincent's like, we're not gonna fucking talk about my son. You're never going to talk about him again, or I'm going to kill you. Which he means and this is followed by Adrian's mom showing up to re-meet Adrian.
She is wise to the fact that this is not Adrian from jump. The first time she, before, before she even sees him, she's just like, uh, okay. Yeah. The dad's like, aren't you going to kiss him? And she's like, okay. I don't think so.
Tee: I don't kiss on the first date? You're not doing that.
Jeremy: I'm not kissing him; I've never met him before.
Emily: Yeah. She's like, I know you're crazy old husband, ex very ex-husband.
Tee: You need somebody in your life. Okay. Which is why she definitely [00:55:00] was like, I don't know who you are, but just take care of this motherfucker, please. Yes. He done went through some shit. So just be there. And then of course you couldn't even follow the mom's direction.
Bitch. Want to die shit, but it's it was just. That was a nice little scene... but except for the fact she punched her in the stomach, like, yeah. Hey, that was just...
Yeah.
Jeremy: Like...'Cause she walks in on Alexia shirtless, poking holes in her stomach and like dying, like she's in serious pain in this scene.
Tee: She was having some Braxton Hicks contractions.
Emily: She also is like, hey, looks like you're lactating motor oil and also her fucking titanium, like baby bump is showing through the holes. So mom is probably like dink dink. Dink dink dink., I don't even know what the fuck, but just take care of my crazy ex-husband
Jeremy: but he [00:56:00] needs somebody and it's not going to be me. So, you just
take care of him.
Ben: Alexia Is incapable of locking doors unless it's to lock her parents into...
Tee: 'Cause if I'm having a whole bunch of titties and a belly that's like ripping apart, and metal is showing, and I'm leaking motor oil out of every crevice, I would be locking the door and pushing something in front of the door until that shower scene. I- what is you doing???
Emily: Yeah... you know what this movie really is? Is it's an advertisement for a Professor Xavier's home for gifted children, because this is what happens when Colossus can't figure his shit out?
Tee: And oh my God.
Ben: This is why Kitty Pride had to leave him at the altar.
Emily: I well, I mean, Colossus at that point, this is the bad narrative Colossus.
Ben: This is age of French apocalypse, Colossus.
Emily: Yeah. But this is [00:57:00] the, this is the video that Professor Xavier's people show parents of like mutants.
This is what could happen to your kid if they don't come to my school. Cause otherwise they're going to be a crazy serial killer. That's going to fuck cars and then have car babies.
Ben: I gotta say, though, that'd be a shitty fucking orientation. Hi, I'm Cyclops. I can shoot beams on my eyes. Hey, I'm Nightcrawler, I can teleport everywhere. What can you do, Alexia? I lactate motor oil.
Emily: And there's some titanium in there. Yeah.
Ben: To X-Force you go?
Oh my God,
Emily: This is more of an X-Statix situation. Oh my.
Jeremy: Okay. So, we're about to learn that they're a better match than we think, 'cause Alexia decides that she's going to try to start bonding with Vincent. They're going to be like father and son and Vincent and Rayane get called in to a fight a forest fire.
Uh, and they are out there making sure that, [00:58:00] there's no other stuff, no other people there that they can save and that nothing's going to blow up. And uh, they uh, Vincent gets knocked down and Rayane picks him up. And he's like, do you know where you are? Do you know who you are? Do you know who that bitch is who's pretending to be your son and Vincent's like weird timing, dude. They walk in, they find a RV and it's got a, like, propane tank in it. And they're like, oh, we gotta get this out of here. Cause it's going to cause a big explosion. And Rayane's like, shouldn't we make sure it's secured? And Vincent's like, actually, why don't you hold it?
And apparently has opened it himself and Rayane blows the fuck up.
Ben: I did not catch that. I did not catch that Vincent fucking kills him.
Emily: Yeah, no. Vincent is like "Here, hold this for me" and then fucking cheeses it.
Jeremy: [00:59:00] All we see of Adrian is smoking wheezing remain or not of Adrian, of Rayane, is smoking, wheezing remains. He is no longer part of the story.
Emily: And this is probably the most literal that the whatever fucking metaphor is going on is because he killed Conscience.
Jeremy: Yeah. He murdered his fucking Jiminy Cricket.
Tee: No remorse, no funeral, no tears... no nothing. Next scene!
Ben: No further acknowledgement in the movie of any kind.
Emily: No, they just have a rave and Alexia does,
Ben: Is that the funeral?
Emily: I guess
Ben: This is a Matrix Zion shit.
Emily: And then
Jeremy: we get the scene with Vincent and Alexia where he's like, look, I know you're not Adrian probably, but whatever anybody tells me, whatever anybody tells you, you're my son, like. I'm going to take care of you. I'm here for you, which is the most weirdly moving scene in this [01:00:00] movie. Because these two murders are just like we're father and son now. We're so close. This is a very important scene. This is like the very French message of this movie is these two serial killers can just bond with each other and become a nice father and son.
Emily: No matter how fucked up you are, you're still human. And there's going to be another fucked up human, just as fucked up as you.
Ben: There's something so weirdly endearing about these two and their father-son relationship.
Jeremy: So, this is where we get the firehouse rave, where Alexia as Adrian gets boosted up to go do a dance on top of the on top of the firetruck.
And instead of just, I don't know, skanking dancing or whatever they're supposed to be doing, this goes full on pole dancing on top of this this thing is really like bending over and working the working all the stuff that she's got bound up. Cause it's - it's real awkward... Some of the firefighters seem to be into it.
[01:01:00] Some of them are clearly not.
Dad comes in and is like, okay,
Tee: This bitch gay I'm out. He was doing, he was, I said I'm. Okay. But... Bitch, this is a firehouse. What are you-
Jeremy: This is the scene of the dad being like, "You can just rub it in my face! ...my face,
Tee: The firefighters were like, "Ay Yo... That's you?"
Emily: That's Jesus.
Ben: Jesus, absolutely does stripteases on firetrucks
Emily: and gives birth to techno babies,
Jeremy: we still follow this up by fucking the fire truck. I'm pretty sure.
Ben: We also have Vincent setting himself on fire.
Jeremy: So, she, there is- she fucks the firetruck. Least upsetting thing that's [01:02:00] about to happen. Yeah, because then... Then she starts to...
Ben: I didn't even react to the firetruck
Jeremy: Her stomach starts ripping like just big swaths of it ripping open, and you can see the metal underneath. She is...
Emily: usually the "c" in c-section doesn't mean "car".
Ben: She is,
Jeremy: she nakedly wanders out of the bottom part of the fire station out into the grassy mid-day outside. And I was like, is it the middle of the day? What the fuck?
Emily: No, that was the night before. This is the morning. It's the early morning. And this is after all the firefighters are hung over
Jeremy: She has been up all night fucking the firetrucks. She's just worked her way through the whole station.
Ben: The firefighters have been up all night, fucking each other,
Tee: oh, my God.
Jeremy: Yeah. So, her stomach is ripping open. You can see the metal underneath. She's working her way up the hill, outside [01:03:00] between where the firetrucks are and where the like firehouses, where she and the dad lived. Um, the dad, meanwhile, is still up drinking liquor spit it out over his chest and then decides to light it on fire.
But apparently not suicidal, just a kink, cause then he decides to put it out and smothers it with the blankets,
Ben: He seemed very surprised by it. Like he was like, I wonder what'll happen if I do this shit, I'm on fire. And I kept yelling at my phone like, on a train. So, it was very disruptive and confusing to other people.
Stop, drop and roll!
Tee: Literally! You a firefighter, baby!
Jeremy: You're already laying down, you don't even have to stop and drop, just roll!
Emily: And there's a whole bed! He like, tries to pat it out. And I'm like, dude, there's a whole bed right there.
Ben: He grabs like a single t-shirt. It's like, yeah, this will do the job
Patch, patch. Pat, pat, pat.
Tee: Meanwhile, ol' girl is just walking through the whole fucking town butt-ass [01:04:00] naked with a belly metal protruding-ass...So you mean to tell me nobody was like... "Ay Yo bitch, come get in the car..."
Emily: Well, she's got the gas coming out of her.
Ben: They've got like the metal ripping out and I'm thinking like, I don't think you're going to be working off that baby weight. I think that metals there to stay.
Jeremy: You know there's some guy on the street out there that's like that chick's a Decepticon man,
Emily: Certainly, more than meets the eye.
Jeremy: This some beast wars shit.
Emily: She is definitely a Predacon.
Ben: Yo, is this Knight Rider's origin story?
Jeremy: Okay, but then she makes it back into the house. She's buck naked. Pieces of metal sticking out of her, finds Vincent. They go progressively from like her laying on him to her, kissing him to almost making out while she's still having like straight up contractions [01:05:00] eventually like, they go- they skip the making out so that he can help her give birth to this baby
Tee: back up. Cause he didn't know she was pregnant until he ripped that thing off. Cause she was all, oh, you know, so guilty, I guess about kissing him and then she tries to cover up, but then he snatches and. through the door, he was going to leave her bitch-ass. He was like "I ain't sign up for this shit."
Emily: Yeah, when she started trying to make out with him, he was like "Nope! Nope! Nope nope nope nope!"
Jeremy: But he's got that.
He's got those like firefighter, ambulance, like reactions. Cause he's like pregnant. Okay. I'm going to help her give birth now, I guess. Yeah. So, he helps deliver the baby, which we don't see. He sets it off to the side as it starts crying so that he can go give Alexia CPR. She's dead. That does not work out.
So, he goes back around and picks up the child and we see him start comforting the child. And we can see that the baby has like a metal spine. [01:06:00] Uh, So it's like part human part metal uh,
Emily: transmetal maybe.
Ben: No, I, I really wish it had been much more of a half car, half baby, but I'm also just thinking if that was a real baby, they used, I don't know legally how many prosthetics you're allowed to put on a baby?
Emily: Definitely not a real baby.
Jeremy: Yo, I don't know what size tire is a baby even takes. Do they make tires at that size?
Tee: I really want to see a hot wheels baby though. Like, I really, I remember the cartoo- okay so I'm old - y'all remember the cartoo- I don't know the name of it, but it was a teenager who turned into a car.
Emily: Yeah, absolutely. They talk about it on MBMBAMs all the time.
Ben: Rick and Morty made a joke about it.
Emily: Yeah. Shit.
Tee: Yeah, I think it was definitely a Hanna-Barbera.
Emily: Yeah, but it was like a
Ben: Turbo Teen!
Tee: I was [01:07:00] expecting Turbo Teen, but smaller.
Jeremy: Turbo baby.
Ben: Okay. They spent an hour 40 minutes hyping up this like car, baby. I was expecting more car than baby.
Emily: At least some flame decals.
Jeremy: I do have to say, oh,
Ben: I had flame decals. If the flame decals were a genetic trait,
This baby just has flame decals on is face?
It's just Guy Fieri.
Jeremy: I do have to say so at this point he takes the baby next to the dead mother and cuddles it. He gets this good, like grandpa cuddle in, in, in, in the end, like Fast and the Furious, this movie is all about family.
Tee: He got a grandson or daughter. I don't, we don't know what the baby... he's got a grand car. That's what he has. He has a grand car. Yes. Congratulations.
Ben: If that's not the- if that's [01:08:00] not how Dom Toretto's characters are gonna go out like just holding his grand car.
Tee: Don't know if it's peep poop, pee or poop. Cause it's all motor oil. Don't know what the hell going on where is it coming from? Oh my God, like, so many questions. So, I just...
Ben: Also, this version of the franchise Letty has left Dom to be with a woman and Dom has gotten together with Helen Mirren.
Emily: Yeah. And then, but who fucks the car?
Tee: Mmm. Tyrese?
Ben: I'm going to go with- I'm going to go with uh, Lucas black from Tokyo Drift
I apologize for getting us wildly off topic...
Emily: No, we are. This is as on topic as we can be and still maintain our sanity with this film seriously, because
Jeremy: Jeremy... we usually ask questions like, hey guys, is this movie feminist? [01:09:00] Don't fucking know.
Emily: It's not, I don't,
Tee: I don't know. Like I know it's ableist... That's all I got.
Jeremy: Yeah, it definitely has problems with disabilities, both physical and. Mental psychological. It almost does a pretty good job with trauma and PTSD, but almost everything else is,
Ben: We don't gain any resolution on the steroid abuse storyline; Vincent just keeps abusing steroids.
Emily: Yeah. The- the behavior in terms of like trauma response, of the things that she's been through on screen I feel like Alexia is trauma responses her confusion, and her a lot of that, her identity confusion, as she's trying to remake herself to be, someone who somebody cares about or something like that, I'm sure you can find if you try hard, you can find some narratives there that [01:10:00] evoke something about queerness, but it's not depicted in a way that it is any, that is anything but like relatable to the worst experience you can have with body dysphoria, which is just like something that a lot of body horror talks about.
But the other thing is that. The fact that this is all basically stacks on her response to having the metal plate in her head, yeah. And the fact that she's in love with the car after she gets, like it's, not all trauma is the same. Like sometimes, people get weird associations when they're going through trauma and they're, they've been through like surgeries and stuff like that.
And that's a thing, but like it's not depicted in any sort of healthy way or any sort of like mature way in this film.
Jeremy: Yeah. I feel like the best, like it's not, I just don't know with feminism on this I don't know where that [01:11:00] falls. The disability stuff is a problem. It doesn't really have anything to say about class, but the-
Emily: The classism is there with that fa- there's some classism, especially with that family that they help.
Ben: In regards to the disability. I definitely noticed, and I thought it was good.
How her surgery scar? It, it wasn't something Alexia, not only didn't hide, she like display- she had it almost like on display. Yeah.
Tee: It was never a topic, which I like that part in regards to disability that I liked, there was no. Oh, I got to explain what happened to me or anything.
Jeremy: Yeah. And she's clearly regarded as sexy, at least at the beginning of the movie before she kept murdering everybody.
Ben: The moment of, oh, my Vincent doesn't even have the moment of, oh, my son seems to have had a major head trauma and is also not talking.
It seems almost incapable of speech. I'm not going to assume any connection between these two.
Tee: [01:12:00] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. This movie was just.
Ben: It was weird. It was a weird-ass film. Yeah. We've watched a lot of movies. This is a weird one.
Jeremy: Yeah. I feel like usually so many of these, like we're just digging for any sort of queer content whatsoever. This one is chocked to the brim with queer content. Almost everything else is like difficult to say, what the hell it saying about it? But there's, there are several gay characters there's, plenty of both began begun aborted, unfortunately. And by murder and, uh, attempted queer relationships in this.
Ben: The scene in the bathroom with the hairpin that's what it literally was.
Emily: I, yes, I've- I was just talking about the, how the relationships were disrupted.
Ben: I thought we were talking about just them. I thought we were talking about the actual abortion scene, and that being, just something the movie explores just in its overall themes of an unwanted pregnancy and one that really seems to be triggering a whole [01:13:00] lot of dysphoria.
Tee: Yeah. Yeah. You know that extended warranty on a baby, that, that hairpin just, she has some good coverage, I don't know.
Ben: I told ya: I didn't want to pay for this baby's nav system.
Emily: I don't wanna... Does this baby come with Sirius?
Tee: That's what I thought the things was on the back. I was like, okay, so this a Bluetooth baby? I'm like, okay, it's all lit up. Like the Bluetooth all down the spine. I didn't know Cadillac had that type of thing.
Ben: Is this a four-wheel drive, baby?
Jeremy: It would be very useful to have a baby that had a car alarm though. Just
Ben: No Jere. Jeremy, you say that until that baby alarms going off at two 30 every morning. [01:14:00] Yeah.
Jeremy: That's that is already a fact just as long as it goes off and somebody tries to pick it up too.
Tee: Oh no, that movie. I don't know. If I ever do this again. I'm picking movies, fuck that. I do not trust
you. I don't know how y'all trust him.
Ben: We would love to have you back and you are right. Jeremy has definitely broken a sacred trust tonight.
Tee: That's that white shit. That movie? It's like, this is some White. Ass. Shit. That's the other thing. I was like this some white shit
Emily: Truer words.
Tee: To the damn serial killer shit
Jeremy: There is no shit whiter than French white shit.
Emily: Oh my God.
Tee: That movie wouldn't work if it was a black woman, fucking a car and got pregnant with a car,
Ben: I need to go just watch Lupin on Netflix. Just to get my head un- my conception of France straight again.
Emily: I don't know if "straight's" the word you want. Definitely. But yeah, the [01:15:00] French white shit-
Ben: "Straight" is never the word I want.
Jeremy: Okay. Wild question. Would you all recommend people watch this movie?
Tee: No. Hell no. I'm not trying to traumatize nobody.
Emily: I'm not trying to traumatize anybody, but I, I will definitely tell my fucked-up friends that want to be bad-ass and watch fucked up movies.
I'm like, have you watched this?
Tee: But you know what? I don't see that as, I didn't see it as a horror movie.
Ben: I recognize-
Tee: That was not horror. You got a little body horror, but overall, it wasn't, it just wasn't horror for me. It was, you know...
Jeremy: It felt really like David Cronenberg's horror stuff to me. Just like things like The Fly and The Brood and things like that, that aren't like necessarily jump out at you scary, but definitely leave you with some fucking scars afterwards. I feel like is like telling people you've [01:16:00] seen this movie as being like, look at this scar.
Nope.
Ben: I would recommend this movie be seen by high school and college age film; snobs who need to be taken down a peg.
Yeah.
Tee: You trying to traumatize the kids going to be like, oh no, my period is red. I thought it was supposed to be black.
Emily: I watched Eraserhead. All the periods in that movie were black with us because it was in black and white.
So at least they had that.
Ben: Yeah. I'm going to say probably I'm going to say maybe no. And also, if you like this movie and want me to recommend something similar to it, I fucking can't. I have no goddamn clue. Cool. Watch The Transformers porn parody. I don't fucking know what to tell ya.
Emily: Okay three things.
Jeremy: Okay. So, Tee, usually we do [01:17:00] a recommendation. It doesn't have to be at all related to this movie. Is there something, when people go check out,
Tee: Asian horror period. Asian horror from, oh my God. Train to Busan, Alice in Borderland or �dishon slash audition, Takashi Miike. Just watch Takashi Miike shit that shit's fire. Asian horror from Malaysian to Korean, the Japanese to Indian, like the whole Asian horror genre is just dope.
Americanized horror is way to me. It's just watered down. Especially when they do the remix, the reboot, The Grudge, The Ring, like all of that stuff is corny. It's not scary. It's not.
You know what this movie wasn't? This movie wasn't watered down, Tee.
Tee: No, the fuck it was not. And I will never watch another French horror movie again, cause ya- ya- y'all motherfuckers over here... Like I'm here for it, but [01:18:00] I feel like this was more sci-fi. Honestly, it felt more sci-fi than horror.
Like psychological.
Yeah.
Ben: Easily. The most hor- traditional horror scene is our protagonist as the horror monster, as she murders her way through this naked flat slash sex party.
Emily: Yeah. And also, like real quick. I, I said, absolutely not. This movie is not feminist the monster baby trope. Yeah. When it comes to, when it comes to like when talking about dysphoria. Yeah. Like totally. But the monster baby trope and like monster pregnancy is something that I think in this day and age needs a little bit more than just like it's there, the fact that it was a titanium monster, okay, sure.
But this movie was way too serious for us to get anything like that. Satisfactory. Yeah.
Tee: Yeah. I definitely wouldn't [01:19:00] recommend to moms, parents who have lost a kid who had babies who are disfigured when they're born or if they're born still, because that a lot of that stuff was really super triggering for me, that bathroom scene, like I just could not watch it.
And of course, seeing this baby with all of this stuff, it's just okay, so we're playing into another trope. Like it just, I ain't like that. I just know that was not, I honestly won't it. If I wasn't doing this, I would have been like, I'd have just tapped out at the bathroom scene. I be like, that's it. I'm good.
Emily: Thank you for seeing it through.
Ben: Yeah, thank you again, just for coming on and being with us tonight. And if you ever
Emily: need like a go fund me for therapy or something, or just want to like, just want to door dash hit me up. You're like, fuck this. I can't because of this [01:20:00] movie, I will door dash.
If we're ever hanging out and then I see Guy Fieri, we'll definitely jump in the way and make sure...
Tee: Please! Flames are scary now. So, thanks Jeremy. I appreciate you.
Jeremy: So, uh, Emily - what do you have to recommend? You said you had some stuff. Okay.
Emily: I have two things. I'm also going to do a support, a benchmark recommendation of Lupin. If you want something that's French and really good and not this that's really great. Yes. It's on Netflix.
Go check it out. But there's two things I'm just going to talk about Under the Skin, which is about is it's a Scottish movie with a ScarJo as an alien that eats dudes. It's sad, but it has, I think it has a little bit more of a message and it's not as painful to watch. And also, it doesn't have like baby shit in it.
It's painful, you're not seeing anybody, like you're not seeing the same amount of people getting stooled and sat [01:21:00] on and all that kind of shit. Unfortunately, the next recommendation that I have if you are at all interested in the weird body horror of this movie and like the, Asian horror, Tetsuo the iron man.
That movie is fucking
Tee: crazy and...
Emily: some movies are, I'm going to spoil it for you because some movies are about the journey. And honestly, I think this is going to be more of a of a a selling point than anything, but it's about two dudes who become metal and then they become a giant penis.
Tee: Yeah. I enjoy that
Emily: movie. Yeah. Okay. So yeah yeah, this is, and also, it's in black and white. There are some really upsetting elements of it. Very upsetting, bad sex. There's a little bit of, uh, sad animal. I think they animal is- the cat's fine, but it's like a cat wearing this suit of like weird screws and [01:22:00] stuff.
And anyway, but then then they- become a gi- they fall in love and become a giant penis. And then they're going to impregnate the world with their new metal, with their new metal,
like
Emily: Linkin Park. Linkin Park - it's the origin story of the park. This is the orig- origin story of Colossus.
Jeremy: Okay. Ben, did you have anything else you wanted to recommend? You did not know what to recommend for this movie?
Ben: I'm watching Lost you haven't checked out Lost, it holds up pretty good.
Jeremy: So, the one thing I would recommend is the reason that I chose this movie, which is this director's other movie Raw, which is equally fucked up in like body horror kind of ways without the weird mix of pregnancy stuff and disability stuff and things like that are weird that- that kind of make that make this movie hard to recommend. Raw, I think is much [01:23:00] better. That way. Raw is also a little hard to watch in some spots, but like a lot of that is about body horror and Raw's- Raw has an, a message that I think is super interesting in it.
And it's- it's a rough one, but it is the reason that I decided to give this a shot for better, for worse. So, I, I do recommend checking that out. It's pretty easy to find, it's few years old now. But yeah, check that out, try that.
If you listening, I don't trust Jeremy's recommendation. So good luck,
I give you every chance to be like, hey, what do you want to watch?
And you were like, I don't know like...
Emily: so future guests, this is what happens if you can't choose a movie.
Jeremy: I mentioned to you that I ain't seen that looks wild as hell.
Tee: I'm going to have to sleep with the lights on and just not because it was scary just because this is just brrrrmm...ugh...
[01:24:00] I'm here for gross, but that was just,
Jeremy: If you hear something metallic knocking at your door. Don't answer it.
Tee: Oh dear.
Jeremy: All right, let's go ahead and wrap this up. Can you let people know where they can find you and your work online?
Tee: But you can find me on IG and Facebook. I'm Mizteefranklin, M I Z T E Franklin. My work, Google Tee Franklin, support The Eat. Bang! Kill. Comic.. Our last issue drops sometime next month and
Yes, everything's digital. We want some queer romance, Harley and Ivy, a lot sex. It's a lot of sex. It's a lot, like a lot of sex. Like a lot of that queer sex like queer, you know, pick it up. We're nominated for a GLAAD award. So obviously it's good. Yeah. And - and get Bingo Love, too. That's a good one.
It's a lot of queer, no sex, you know, I made it the kids or whatever, but [01:25:00] it's queer romance.
Emily: Yeah. Perfect.
Jeremy: Fantastic. As for the rest of us, you can find emily@megamoth on twitter and at mega_moth on Instagram and at megamoth.net. Ben is on Twitter at BentheKhan and their website is BenKahnComics.com, where you can pick up all of their books, including the brand-new Immortals: Phoenix Rising graphic novel from great beginnings.
And you can order the upcoming blows against the empire graphic novel. And finally, for me, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at J Rome Five Eight, and my website at jeremywhitley.com, where you can check out everything I write. And of course, the podcast is on Patreon at Progressively Horrified or on the website at progressivelyhorrified.transistor.fm and on Twitter at ProgHorrorPod, where we would love to hear from you. speaking of loving, to hear from you, we would love it. If you would rate and review this podcast, wherever you're listening to it and let us know what you think of it. It'll help new listeners find the podcast.
I do want to thank again Tee thank you so much for coming on. Sorry. I traumatized you. Uh, it was uh, [01:26:00] it was certainly a fun movie to talk about.
Emily: I'm glad we could share this together. Yes. Together.
Ben: Yes. That is uh- we are now bonded in our fucking trauma over this movie.
Tee: Yes. Very much cause I ain't driving no more.
Jeremy: Is taking the bus better?
Tee: I don't know. I just be in my wheelchair. I'll just wheel myself wherever I need to go. I'm in charge of that bitch.
Jeremy: Thank you, Emily and Ben for co-hosting as always. And thanks again to all of you for listening and until next time stay horrified.