SPOILER DISCUSSION

1.Alexia’s relation with Justine (Garance Marillier) (besides being a cute nod to Garance’s role as Justine in Raw) demonstrates the way the former loves metal but doesn’t care about human flesh. While hooking up with Justine, Alexia is solely focused on sucking and licking the metal piercings in Justine’s nipple, going so far as to bite the piercing and pull in spite of the pain it causes Justine. Alexia only sees the metal, only wants a relationship to the metal, only wants to love the metal.

It doesn’t matter if Justine is there or not there. She’s just a vessel holding the metal piercings. When Alexia kills Justine, she’s not killing someone she loves as much as releasing the metal from a lump of flesh not worthy of love. This explains why Justine has no qualms just killing people. They’re not people as much as they are just renderings of flesh, soft things that can be eliminated.

2.So the car that Alexia loves and has sex with is one that’s covered in flames. Her passions are ablaze and have no breaks. She hasn’t learned any control since her childhood accident and still seeks to provoke and push limits.

After she’s pregnant, Alexia burns her parents alive. The flames of the car become substantiated in the fire that burns the evidence of her murders and contributes to two new bodies in the form of her mother and father. However, upon meeting Vincent( Vincent Lindon) Alexia is forced to recalibrate her relationships to flames. Instead of causing them or allowing them to go into her, she has to put them out and save people from them. The uncontrolled nature of her drives is put under control and she’s forced to mediate between the flames and the lives they target.

Flames go from being associated with deviancy and death to becoming a place where one can save. Alexia as Adrien helps people stay alive in the fires. Far from causing them and the violence, she’s now managed to find a way to temper the heat back.