Agathe Rousselle hates horror movies.
Even after making her screen debut working with Julia Ducournau, the French filmmaker who made audiences rush for sick bags with her cannibal drama Raw a few years earlier, Rousselle still can’t imagine anything she’d like to watch less.
“When promoting a film like Titane, everybody you speak to assumes you love horror”, she explained to Zavvi, “so I tried watching some. I started out with the remake of Suspiria, and after an hour I was wondering why I was doing it to myself.”
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Taking a starring role in a film that has already become notorious for having audience members faint during screenings may not seem like a natural fit for the actress.
But then, there’s very little about Titane that’s conventional; a brutal first act, in which psychopathic serial killer Alexia goes on the run after taking too many victims, soon becomes a tender family drama as she disguises herself as Adrien, the long lost son of fireman Vincent (Vincent Lindon).
Hiding her real identity is easier said than done considering Alexia’s big secret – a plot point that has got people talking since the film’s Cannes premiere in July. For Rousselle, this is exactly why it’s baffling that it’s become such a widely acclaimed film.
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“I thought people were going to fight more about it. It’s a film where I have sex with a car and try to abort the pregnancy, you expect more vocal haters for that”.
This is partly why she thinks the film is more of a sci-fi than a horror (“if I’m comfortable watching it, it’s not a horror”), but the bigger reason is the focus on the nuclear family drama.
“It’s a film about heritage and legacy, but one that acknowledges that families f*cking suck. It’s about how you’re programmed to act a certain way growing up, and how that can be reprogrammed throughout your life.
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“The way you experience love as an adult has everything to do with how you were loved as a kid, but this film is about how that can be overcome, how you can learn to feel that love. And that’s a beautiful thing, to know that no matter what you went through, that is possible.”
Surprisingly, the intimate domestic drama and the queasy body horror work better together than you may expect – although, if you’ve seen Raw, Ducournau’s tale of sisterhood and the desire to eat human flesh, this may not be a big surprise.
When auditioning for the film, Rousselle wasn’t given the finished script, and only saw it after being told she had got the part. It was here that she realised she would have to play a psychopath.
“I hadn’t seen her previous film at the time, but I knew that Julia was a good director. It just wasn’t until that moment that I realised her vision was both brilliant and f*cked up.
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“The chance to build a psychopathic character was interesting to me because I tend to feel things a bit too much, so building a character entirely removed from myself, and entirely detached from any situation, was enticing. I’m not interested in playing characters who are like me, I live with myself all day – I wouldn’t want to put that on a screen to show to anyone.”
So Rousselle took a deep dive into understanding the mind of a psychopath, binge watching interviews with serial killers, in an intensive three-month regime to get into character.
“Watching interviews with psychopaths and serial killers, you’d often see that they were outgoing on the surface; someone like Ed Kemper would be laughing and joking with the interviewer. But looking closer, you’d see that their eyes wouldn’t change with the facial expressions, there’d be a complete emptiness whilst they try to present themselves in a certain way.
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“When you start understanding how psychopaths function, you realise it’s not possible to get into that mindset if you feel emotion – I was training all the time to keep my eyes empty and blank when meeting people, to try and understand how they communicate.”
Then there were the physical demands of the role. Alexia is a dancer who performs at car shows, in addition to being a merciless killer, meaning that she had to do more than just fight training in preparation.
“I had a dance teacher, who’s the queen of pole dancing in France. She taught me everything about sexy dancing, as I had no idea how to move my ass before making this! I could dance, but had never thought about doing this, it wasn’t a side of myself I was willing to explore – but she unleashed me completely.
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“And then I had a coach for gaining muscle and losing weight, as you have to be strong even when pretending to kill people. It’s so tiring; I was so weak in the legs and the arms, it’s surprising just how much your whole body aches when being a murderer.”
Rousselle was initially discovered by the casting director via Instagram, as part of a larger hunt to discover a lead actor who could take on such a challenging role. Her co-star, however, was never in question, as the director wrote the part of Vincent for French screen icon Vincent Lindon.
“It’s not nothing to hear from a director that they’re writing a film for you”, Lindon explained to Zavvi. “It’s not like they’re saying they want you to be in it – if you say no, then there’s no movie, which puts a lot of expectation on how you react when you read the script.”
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The story of the actor’s involvement dates back a few years. He knew the director through a family connection, and reached out to her after seeing Raw.
“I couldn’t work out how she had that in her head. I called her and had to ask if these ideas were in her brain when I’d previously met her.”
They agreed to meet, but unbeknownst to the actor, she was in the process of writing what would become Titane. After three glasses of wine (“the perfect level to ask me”) she announced that she was writing a starring vehicle for Lindon.
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Even though he had no idea whether or not he would do it, he started training to get himself in shape for the role, as he had trust in the director’s process. A year later, Julia returned.
“The first time I read that script, it went through my heart and not my brain. I called Julia and I said, please don’t ask me what this film is about – I really don’t have any f*cking idea. What I do know is that I don’t want anybody in France to do that character instead of me.
“It’s like falling in love, you don’t know why these emotions happen, and it’s hard to explain in two hours something you felt in just one second. Now I’m on the other side, I know how to talk about it – but if I’d seen you the day after reading that script, it would be a very short interview.
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“Sometimes, you just feel when something is right.”
With a full screenplay now in hand, the 62-year-old’s training regime was taking shape. But one question lingered: he understood his character was a steroid addict with a desire to stay fit, but what was compelling him to undertake such a significant transformation for this role?
“When you change your body, you change your mind – and first, you have to ask yourself why you need to commit yourself to this specific project. In this case, it was going deeper and realising how this character resonated with me.
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“He’s afraid of death, like me, and he’s shooting up so he can feel younger. And I may not relate to that, but I relate to that need to feel that way; I just go on a diet, while he injects himself. On top of this, I’m a father, so this script really made me ponder my relationship with my children; would I still love them as much as I do now if they weren’t my family? These were all questions on my mind.”
“I have two films playing in festivals and have just finished shooting another (Fire, the next film from acclaimed director Claire Denis), and yet I’ve never felt so weak. I’m always worried about losing control, the passage of time as I get older, and the wellbeing of my children.
“A lot of journalists in France have said they’ve never seen me this way before in film – but of all the characters I’ve done, this is the one closest to how I feel. I just changed my body to become him.”
For the actor, playing the role of Vincent often felt like “tempting fate” – a worry that portraying a character so similar to him in worldview would impact his life. But now, looking back at the film is like an out-of- body experience.
“Going through interviews, I’m still finding out new things about the film, just because of how everybody sees this story in a different way.
“In your real life, you don’t examine yourself in every waking moment, you can only do it in reflection. Here, I offered Julia my brain and my body, and trusted her to the point that it was the first time in my life that I felt out of control. When I first saw the movie, I couldn’t even believe it was me. I certainly can’t dance like that”.
You may go into Titane expecting to be horrified, but you’ll come out surprisingly moved. It may be a daring, provocative film, but whatever you do, don’t call it a horror.
Titane is released in UK cinemas on 26th December.
