– Image courtesy of TheMovieDB
By: Mandy
Posted: November 21, 2023
Originally Written: October 23, 2023
This essay contains spoilers.
Maniac in the streets, Bumblebee in the sheets.
I’m a little too tired to give a full review, but I want to give this film a full in depth analysis because this is a wiiiild film, and one of the best I’ve seen all month. I was almost mad for a moment when we transitioned away from the serial killer character study story, but the second half is pure gold, honestly. Hard spoilers for the next part, because I am going to spoil nearly everything in this movie, and I think this is one of those films best experienced on its own, so if you haven’t seen it, just know my opinion is that it’s incredible and well worth your time.
I took this as a whole to be a story to be partly on parenting, but mostly about how your gender slots you into roles at the start of your life, and how society overly-cares about those traditional gender roles…but you shouldn’t feel restricted by them.
Alexia is a woman who has an attraction to other women and a fetish for cars, something possibly instilled in her by a traumatic experience that sent her to the hospital and gave her a metal plate in her head, but car culture is very notoriously male-dominated. She’s also a classic movie serial killer, a role typically reserved for male villains. She gets knocked up after having sex with a car (this is a thing), and this reminder of womanhood is something she clearly doesn’t want, even trying to force an abortion on herself.
The second half really sells it, however, as in an attempt to go on the run for her murders, she mangles herself, binds her chest and pregnant stomach, and goes mute to believably try and pass off as the long lost son of a firefighter named Victor. The plan amazingly seems to work, although everybody else around the firefighter can see through it and calls him delusional – including his co-worker and ex-wife. The father seems to notice something is wrong, but in his grief doesn’t care, and he even does things to help make his “son” more of a man, like getting Alexia to fight him and trying to force facial hair to grow on her face.
The firefighter has his own struggle with masculinity, as he’s constantly injecting steroids into himself just to keep feeling manly, even as his body is getting old and failing. He is lonely and depressed, but it’s thanks to that that Victor doesn’t seem to mind that Alexia isn’t his long lost son Adrien. She can fill that void even if she is by no means perfect. The part that really broke me was Victor finally walking in on an Alexia who had just stepped out of the shower. When seeing her boobs and the pregnancy she had been trying to hide, all he does is grab her towel and tie it back around her, telling her “no matter what, you’ll always be my son”. The final shot in the movie being Alexia giving birth and dying, only for Victor to cradle her baby, a son with the same metal plate in his head, is incredible.
It’s very powerful stuff, only bolstered by its expert pacing and cinematography. I had to think on it for a moment, but it deserves the full five stars from me, if just for how hard it goes. Big, big thumbs up to the car baby movie.