Review: Crimes Of The Future

Image courtesy of Neon.

 

"Long live the new flesh" was the tagline for director David Cronenberg's disturbing 1983 sci-fi thriller "Videodrome" and it could serve as one for his latest film, "Crimes of the Future," if the picture didn't already have its own new mantra: "Surgery is the new sex."

Set in the not-so-distant future, the next stage of human evolution appears to be slowing making itself known as several characters in the movie display bodily abilities not available to others. The film opens with one such character - a young boy sitting alone on the shore who is called inside by his mother. Moments later, she witnesses him taking a bite out of a plastic trash can and ingesting it without seemingly harming himself. Repulsed, she takes a pillow and smothers him to death.

Elsewhere, body performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen in an understated performance) is drawing his usual crowd of observers with handheld filming devices at the ready as his artistic partner, Caprice (Lea Seydoux) removes an organ and places it in a jar. This is their performance: Saul's body is apparently trying to kill him and continues to grow new organs for which he has no room; so, Caprice removes them, and an eager audience gathers to view these performances. Both Caprice and Saul also seem to get off on the whole thing.

Several people find their way into the duo's orbit - two of whom are bureaucratic investigators from the National Organ Registry named Timlin (Kristen Stewart in the film's oddest performance) and Wippet (Don McKellar). Although these two originally warn Saul and Caprice that their performances break various laws, they soon become intrigued by the performances and become devoted acolytes. Timlin especially becomes fixated on Saul.

A mysterious man named Lang (Scott Speedman) seeks out Saul and Caprice, and proposes a show that they can put on for their fans that involves dissecting his dead son. The boy, of course, is the one we saw being smothered at the beginning, and we are told that what viewers will witness when the boy's carcass is opened up will amaze them. A police inspector (Welket Bungue) with whom Saul has a previous relationship also starts poking around and seems to want to know what Lang is up to.

"Crimes of the Future" marks a return for Cronenberg to the body horror genre where he first found his start. It bears more in common with 1980s landmarks like "Videodrome" or "Dead Ringers" than it does the more stylish dramas and crime pictures he did earlier this century - the remarkable "A History of Violence," "Eastern Promises" and "A Dangerous Method" - although it also bears some similarity to his provocative and powerful "Crash," which chronicled the story of people who got off on getting into dangerous car crashes, whereas here they have substituted surgery for their erotic pleasure.

The film provides audiences with a lot to chew on - and there's one particular sequence of chewing on an open wound that is bound to make viewers squirm a little - and its bleak view of the future of the human race is certainly compelling. It's a good film and a godsend that Cronenberg has returned to filmmaking after an eight-year hiatus, even if "Crimes of the Future" doesn't quite rank for me among the director's best. It's well worth a watch and better than his two most recent films - his "Cosmopolis" adaptation and "Maps to the Stars" - but it's not on the level of the handful of movies that came directly before them.

Cronenberg has long been obsessed with the deterioration of the body - remember his version of "The Fly"? - which is another way of saying getting older, and his latest is no exception. There's also some jaw dropping freakishness on display - the aforementioned autopsy and a sequence in which another body artist with ears strewn about his body and eyes and mouth sewn shut dances for an audience - and some dark, absurdist humor. "Crimes of the Future" is a movie that could only have been made by Cronenberg - and as such, it's a pretty solid return to form.