David Cronenberg returns to the Cannes Film Festival with a film in line with “Chromosome 3”, “Crash” or “eXistenZ” and his apocalyptic vision of the future… In theaters this Wednesday.
Published: May 24, 2022 at 4:27 p.m.
Reading time:
2 min
against all odds, The Crimes of the Future did not set fire to the Croisette, contrary to what the trailer, incandescent and sulphurous, give hope. However, do not believe that David Cronenberg has fallen into line! On the contrary, with his new feature film (the first since 2014), and in line with Chromosome 3, Crash or existencehe writes a chapter in absolute coherence with a work that has never ceased to question the mutation of humanity. Literally as well as figuratively.
The future in question looks like a post-apocalyptic city au look vintage. The functioning of the human body has undergone alterations that can lead to the creation of new organs. Tumor is not a taboo word. An artist performer (Viggo Mortensen) and his muse (Léa Seydoux) make shows arty hair-raising blows with the scalpel, while a new morality police tries to restore order in this maelstrom of nascent flesh.
Surgery as artistic expression. As a new sexuality above all. No wonder from Cronenberg, filmmaker performer he too who punctuates his verbose, arid and little embodied subject with incredible visual flashes. True paintings which we do not know if they release a new form of sensuality or if they feed a nightmarish poem in good and due form.
The Canadian director does not drool for all that. He imagines organisms capable of digesting plastic, and therefore our own waste. Finally a man in harmony with the world he creates. Incisive, the future seen by David Cronenberg.
By David Cronenberg, with Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart. Canada. 1:47. Science fiction.
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film critic Cinema Canada Kristen Stewart David Cronenberg Léa Seydoux Cannes Film Festival
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