(Cannes) David Cronenberg predicted before 75and Cannes Film Festival that spectators would leave the room within the first five minutes of his new film. Immediately, some imagined that Crimes of the Future would scandalize and shock the public of the Festival as CrashSpecial Jury Prize in 1996.
Posted at 8:00 p.m.
Let’s say that the new Cronenberg, presented in competition on Monday, arrived on the Croisette preceded by a sulphurous reputation… to which the legendary Canadian filmmaker himself contributed. The rush to exit, as far as I know, did not happen.
“I was misunderstood,” the 79-year-old director told me in an interview on a terrace in Cannes. What I wanted to say is that the audience at Cannes is not a normal audience. Some are here to see stars or be on the red carpet. They may be upset, outraged or annoyed enough to leave the performance. Even if it’s not at all what I want! »
Crimes of the FutureDavid Cronenberg’s first film in eight years, is not a remake of the experimental film of the same title, made in 1970 by the Torontonian. It is the story of an avant-garde artist, Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), whose body manufactures new organs never before seen in a dystopian world.
PHOTO FROM IMDB
Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart in Crimes of the Future
He counts on the collaboration of his companion surgeon, Caprice (Léa Seydoux), who proceeds to the ablation of the new organs after having tattooed them in vivo. They are quite literally, as one character in the film says, “artists of interior landscapes”. Stars in their field: that of live surgery as an art performance. A mysterious group of dissidents wishes to take advantage of their notoriety to reveal to the world the next stage of human evolution…
David Cronenberg returns “to some of his obsessions”, announced at the press conference of the unveiling of his programming the general delegate Thierry Frémaux.
” He is wrong ! exclaims the filmmaker, smiling. It is legitimate, of course, that he says that. And I know that the film will be perceived by admirers of my early works in this way. But I’m not obsessed! Not at all ! [me dit-il en français]. This is how I see the world. The body is reality. We make films with bodies. This is what we photograph. So for me, it’s all natural. »
In Crimes of the Futurewhich is due to be released on June 3 in Quebec, Cronenberg remade in the body horror from its beginnings. We inevitably think of Videodrome… as well as the Palme d’Or last year, Titanium by Julie Ducournau, which was in a way a tribute to Cronenberg’s cinema.
“Obviously, I see the links between this film and Videodrome, says David Cronenberg. We plug things into the body. But I also see links with A Dangerous Method, Cosmopolis Where Maps to the Stars. Even if it’s less obvious. However, I haven’t made a film that would be the equivalent of Cronenberg’s greatest hits! »
So you don’t have to look in Crimes of the Future nods to his old films? Old cathode ray screens made me think of Videodrome.
“I don’t have a creative advantage to think about my old films. I forget them. If there are links, so much the better. It’s all about me, anyway. When I was talking to William Burroughs about naked lunch, I told him that I was going to have to incorporate his life into the script. He replied that he made no distinction between his life and his work. It’s a bit the same for me. All my films are part of a single work. »
The Canadian finds himself competing in Cannes for the sixth time after Crash, spider, A History of Violence, Cosmopolis and Maps to the Starswhich won Julianne Moore the Best Actress Award in 2014.
“It’s fantastic to be in competition because we have worldwide media attention. I made an independent film, with a relatively modest budget. We don’t have the budget to promote it like Top Gun. So it’s great to be here already for marketing. I’ve said it often: winning a prize or not afterwards is secondary. »
David Cronenberg once again raises interesting ethical questions in this work where “inner beauty” is in the spotlight. How far can and should we go in transforming our bodies so that they adapt to a new environment? The filmmaker, who suggested he would create an NFT from photos of his kidney stones, also wonders what art is.
“What is art? This is a question to which we have no answer. But we will continue to try to answer them. Because new art is created, which perhaps would not have been considered art by the Greeks,” says the filmmaker, who partly shot his film in Athens.
In the near future depicted in Crimes of the Future, evolution being what it is and by an amazing genetic mutation, people don’t suffer anymore. Their body no longer has the ability to feel pain. The latest fad is self-harm. Also, if the images of scalpels and diving into the innards are not in your palette of tastes, you may prefer to pass your turn. Anything you can do with a drill or pizza cutter…
And since no one gets infected anymore, sterilization has taken over. The surgical instruments are stored like ordinary tools in a garage. Even hand washing has gone out of style. “I wrote a first version of the screenplay in 1998. I couldn’t imagine that 25 years later, we would be living everything we had! says Cronenberg.
The film also features Don McKellar and Kristen Stewart as the archivists of these new man-made bodies. Stewart offers the most quirky game of this deliberately quirky film. What do you want, the sight of internal organs freshly extirpated from a body thrills his character…
She’s not the only one. All seem to take pleasure in being lacerated. They are excited at the sight of a fresh spleen or bloody kidney. Each his own.
“Surgery is the new sex,” confirms Saul, freshly eviscerated. It is in this sadomasochistic evocation that this film, which could have been called sex and surgeries, evokes the most Crash.
” Crash wasn’t science fiction, and maybe that’s why it was more disturbing, Cronenberg believes. The Fly, an opera with three characters, is a very depressing story, but since it’s science fiction, it goes better! »
Nothing is quite what it seems in the filmmaker’s return to science fiction. Crimes of the Future is a dark, disturbing and sensual work. It’s twisted, it’s comical and it’s anxiety-provoking – courtesy of Howard Shore’s music – as is often the case with Cronenberg.
But this dystopia does not fulfill all its promises. There are tracks left in plan in the scenario, in the games of pretenses especially. The motivations of the characters are not always clear and the metaphysical dialogues sometimes veer towards the wordy side.
On the other hand, there are very strong and significant images. The realization, made of chiaroscuros, is magnificent. The film begins with a disturbing scene of a child who greedily eats a plastic trash can, unable to control himself in front of a mother exasperated at having given birth to such a monster.
“It’s a film about the evolution of the human body, for better and for worse,” Cronenberg explains. Partly inspired by what we’ve done to the environment, which may be irreversible. Will humans be able to adapt to their new environment thanks to technology, and feed on the plastic that pollutes our oceans? Will it be necessary, in a certain way, to subvert capitalism in order to survive? The film is a little satirical, I am having fun. But the questions he asks are serious. »