A young woman who has a metal plate in her head after a car accident develops a fixation with automobiles. After a series of violent incidents she goes on the run and assumes the identity of a missing teenage boy, moving in with the boy’s firefighter father.

This is Crash meets The Fast and the Furious, only it leans far more towards the latter. The car fetishism and body horror are there, but the film spends most of its time on chases, fights and people running about in jumpsuits.

Julia Ducournau’s film arrived laden with acclaim and awards, including the Palme d’Or. I expected something that would get under the skin. It didn’t. The characters did nothing for me, the shocks feel calculated rather than genuine, and the whole thing left me cold and underwhelmed. Style is not the same as substance.

A film that thinks it’s profound because it has engines and blood. It isn’t.

2 out of 5 stars