🎬 #129 Bodies Of The Future.
Apologies, my charismatic and hardworking readers - this week there is just one film. But it’s a wild one. Even for this director. I hope you are suitably perplexed, disturbed and stimulated.
Happy viewing
Bry
FILM: CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
2022 Dir David Cronenberg
1 hr 47 mins
I really enjoy Cronenberg and increasingly the work of his son Brandon. He likes to push boundaries, try new ways of combining horror and the body, sex and violence. And he seems like a nice down to earth Canadian guy at the same time. So this week I’ve dedicated the newsletter to his latest film.
It’s a strange watch even for him. But I enjoyed it. There is a refreshing ambiguity to the setting and locations of the film which lend it a new kind of vision of a dystopian future where people eat plastic and grow new organs.
At the centre of the story is a duo of performance artists, who remove these new organs in front of an enamoured crowd. Some of the scenes of surgery feel like orgies, or sex shows - a voyeuristic crowd looking on at violent penetration with lust and eagerness. People in the film even declare that surgery is the new sex. The mood is distinctly Cronenberg - that feeling of detached numbness that he somehow conjures up. There really is no one else like him.
TL;DR: Cronenberg’s Crimes Of The Future is a deep dive back to his body horror roots - feel aroused and disgusted all at once.
*Available for a small rental fee on Apple and Amazon in the US and the UK.
Fact: The title is the same as Cronenberg’s film from 1970, though that one had an entirely different plot.