In flesh and metal: Automachinic femininity in Titane

Abstract

This article examines how Julia Ducournau's Titane (2021) reconfigures the cultural coding of the automobile in French cinema by merging it with female corporeality to construct what I term automachinic femininity. Challenging the long-standing masculinized framing of both cars and women as objects of spectacle, the article argues that Titane fuses flesh and metal through a grotesque yet generative aesthetic. Through textual and semiotic analysis, the study situates the film within a lineage of French cinema while emphasizing its radical transgression. Central to this analysis is the figure of the Metallic Madonna, a mythic cyborg hybrid that reworks Marian iconography through machinic pregnancy and birth. By destabilizing binaries such as masculine/feminine and organic/mechanical, Titane positions the female body as a site of posthuman transformation rather than passive display. The article concludes that Ducournau's film offers a feminist posthuman framework for rethinking gender, technology, and embodiment in contemporary cinema today globally.