Returning to his favoured genre of body horror, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future (2022)follows Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and his assistant, Caprice (Lea Seydoux). Living in a future world where human evolution has led to mutations that could prove dangerous to the species, synthetic organs are created to help against this and to adapt to the new environment. Saul and Caprice are performance artists, whose act consists of Caprice performing live surgery on Saul for an enthralled audience.
If that synopsis isn’t making a lot of sense I can only apologise, but honestly, I would be lying if I was a hundred percent sure about what was going on in this film. This is a hindrance to me really loving the film, but if I’m being perfectly honest it didn’t affect my enjoyment nearly as much as I initially feared. I enjoyed not having my hand held and trying to work out what was going on without it being clear and obvious, and although I left the film still not fully sure (maybe I’m just a dumbass) there was enough narrative that I could grab onto to have been kept invested. The main reason I enjoyed the film, however, is due to the world-building that Cronenberg manages to pull off. It is all shown and not told, so it is unclear when or where the film is meant to be set, but once you settle into it the weirdly sci-fi, dystopian nature of the whole thing kept me very invested and intrigued. Obviously, the weird, body horror elements of the film are up my street, although it is not quite as horrific in the ‘scary’ sense as past Cronenberg films, but it fits the tone and themes of the film perfectly. Nothing in the world feels out of place and it allowed me to get fully invested in the environment and atmosphere even if the narrative went over my head. I think, like many of his past films, this is going to be divisive, but in my opinion, it is a weird and wonderful oddity of a film that I won’t soon forget.
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