Crimes Of The Future (2022) **** [Body Horror By David Double Feature Pt. 2]
What a delight, after three collaborations with David Cronenberg (the previous one eleven years prior!), to finally have had Viggo Mortensen star in one of the director's "body horror" films. After Maps To The Stars, a full eight years prior (one of my least favorite by the director but still a good film), I wasn't sure what to expect of Crimes Of The Future (2022) when I first saw it. I love it (it was my top film of 2022) and continue to, after three viewings already. Viggo, Léa Seydoux, and Kristen Stewart all contribute strong performances, the cinematography is striking and moody, and Howard Shore delivered another unusual, stellar score (the main theme of which, over the title and end credits, reminds me a bit of 2019's Uncut Gems (review)).
COTF is a brilliant companion piece—with a natural extension of themes DC has been mining his whole career—to Videodrome (1983) (review), eXistenZ (1999), Dead Ringers (1988), Crash (1996) (review), and The Brood (1979) (review). The exploitation factor and gross exploration of human anatomy so prevalent in DC's movies is certainly there. But it's also a talky, arty picture that calls to mind other works by him, such as Naked Lunch (1991) (review), Cosmopolis (2012) (review), and Eastern Promises (2007) (review), particularly in the case of the latter when it comes to one plot point, which I won't spoil.
There's a lot of ideas and topics crammed into COTF—art, performance, politics, authority, autonomy, pain, pleasure, surgery, sex, self-mutilation, evolution, digestion. But the film stretches out rather languidly and manages to have cohesion. Like the best of Cronenberg's work, it opens up plenty of questions, but doesn't attempt to solve anything, rather presenting the opportunity for dialogue and offering an ambiguous ending, which might irk some viewers but which I personally find perfect.
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