Little White Lies Issue 91: November/December 2021

What follows is a short Q&A with Hannah about the process. LWLies: How many tattoos do you have? Strong: As of October 2021, 11, though that number is subject to change. What was your first one and what was the experience like of getting it? The first one I got was a ghost on my left forearm. Honestly, it’s one I really don’t like and wish I’d waited a bit longer, found an artist who would do a good job and not rip me off – but I was 24 and your early twenties are for making mistakes. The artist kept me waiting for four hours in the studio which should have been a red flag. He was perfectly nice but I’m just not happy with the execution and have…

Directed by JULIA DUCOURNAU Starring AGATHE ROUSSELLE, VINCENT LINDON, GARANCE MARILLIER Released 31 DECEMBER There is an easy way to sell any cinephile on Titane: this is a darkly funny midnight movie; an amalgamation of capital-G genre pictures; a sexy and strange romp where the structural rug pulls beg to remain unspoiled and picked apart in equal measure. None of that is wrong, exactly. Julia Ducournau’s second feature is a total blast, silly and tight and sufficiently gnarly, with sound design that allows a beat after every crunch for the audience to gasp. What makes Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner so special, however, is that it is never quite the movie you expect it to be. It opts, again and again, for the richer, more perverted, more beautiful path. It does not put you…

Not to be dramatic, but Titane is transcendent cinema. Julia Ducournau’s follow-up to 2017’s cannibal coming-of-age tale Raw is a wild ride of mythic proportions that parlays body horror, dark comedy and family drama into a singular cinematic experience. Titane (a nod to both the metal used to make surgical implements and a feminised version of the Greek deity) is the mutant child of David Cronenberg and Shinya Tsukamoto, packed with ideas that borrow from Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of gender, the Bible and the work of photographer Nan Goldin. The film won the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, making Ducournau only the second woman to win the top festival prize after Jane Campion in 1993. It is also one of the wildest films to ever pick…

Landing a lead role in a Palme d’Or-winning drama from one of France’s most exciting new filmmakers is something most actresses would kill for – particularly a part as complex and challenging as the one Titane provides. Agathe Rousselle gamely takes on the persona of Alexia, a dancer with violent tendencies and strange predilections who goes on the run from her past and forms an unlikely bond with a grieving firefighter. Striking, subtle and hypnotic, she commands the screen in a way that feels effortless – an achievement made all the more impressive given it’s her debut film role. LWLies: I read that you had an embroidery business before you got the part in Titane? Rousselle: I have wanted to be an actress since I was 15 or something, so…

What is the greatest film score of all time? That’s a debate that has the potential to range all day, but whatever one’s answer, the relationship between music and the moving image is incontrovertible. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, filmmakers were swift to capitalise on the powerfully symbiotic relationship between visual poetry and subjective, illusory notes on a cue sheet. In the days of vaudeville and silent cinema, it was common practice for live pianists to perform live to picture before increasingly sophisticated working practices began to take hold. Organs were installed that could mimic objective sound elements like bird songs, and a boom in cinema construction saw movie theatres equipped with specially designed orchestra pits capable of accommodating the finest classical musicians of the period.…

“I have identified as a composer since being a child, when I scribbled dots on manuscript paper while sitting at. the piano… to me a composer is someone who could write. music the same way an· author wrote books or an artist painted paintings.” Suzanne Ciani “As a composer, you keep going and going until you surprise yourself."” John Murphy…