“Surgery is the new sex”: this is how Cannes experienced the return of master David Cronenberg with “Crimes of the Future”

The latest short film David Cronenberg takes his obsession with physical horrors to a curious limit: he confronts him with his own corpse. It’s called “The Death of David Cronenberg”, it lasts less than a minute, and in it you can see the Canadian filmmaker approaching a version of himself with livid skin, his mouth stiff from the last rattle. The living Cronenberg lies down next to the dead Cronenberg and hugs him, stays next to him.

It is not the first time that Cronenberg has played with his own death (it is worth watching the short “At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World”), but today we can affirm that the director of “The Fly ” and “A violent history” is more alive than ever, thanks to the Cannes Film Festival premiere of his long-awaited feature film “Crimes of the Future”.

Because the postponement of said project gave a feeling of withdrawal. Netflix turned it down, apparently because it was too weird and provocative for his catalogue, or at least that’s what Cronenberg himself claimed. After all, what can you expect from a filmmaker who has been provoking the susceptible since the 1960s?

INTESTINAL AND PSYCHIC

The master of ‘body horror’ has always been an expert in dazzling and scaring the audience in equal parts. His films became extremely popular, and critically praised, for exploring the most sordid organic affections of the human being. In “The Brood” he showed a group of monstrosities that were born from the body of a woman turned into a terrifying queen mother; in “Scanners” she disturbed us with her exploding heads; “The fly” became a classic of human-animal mutations; and the stupendous “Crash” followed fetishists who got off on car accidents and mutilations.

Later in his career, specifically in the 2000s, Cronenberg showed an interesting thematic turn with a series of films in which physical monstrosities gave way to psychological ones. “A violent history” (2005), “Eastern promises” (2007) and “A dangerous method” (2011) had in common the psychic alterations of their characters. Interestingly, the three were carried out by the one who became a kind of accomplice of the director, the actor Viggo Mortensen.

But it seems that the Canadian hits the return to his original obsessions: “Crimes of the Future”, starring Mortensen again with Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart, has a plot as creepy as its first trailer: set in an indefinable but near future , where pain no longer exists, tells the story of a ‘performer’ who performs live sessions during which he has organs removed that he has previously made to grow by means of an accelerator treatment. “Surgery is the new sex,” says one of the characters. A twisted slogan for this new film adventure.

FROM DISGUST TO LAS PALMAS

Days before the official premiere of “Crimes of the Future” at the Cannes Film Festival, Cronenberg had already announced that he was prepared to see people leaving the show in front of the sexual sadism of scalpels. “My interest is not to shock and my goal is not for people to leave the room, but it can happen,” he told Agence France-Presse.

His prediction was fulfilled, because in the debut function this Monday there were several spectators who could not stand some of the grotesque scenes, as reported by “Variety”. On the other hand, there was also a seven-minute ovation for the director. Certainly, the timing of applause in Cannes has become a tradition that ultimately says little or nothing about the quality of the films. But the contrast between the rejection and the cheers speak of a polarizing film.

“It’s more of a stylistic piece than a narrative story,” wrote Richard Lawson, critic for “Vanity Fair,” who also noted some shocking moments. At the press conference, Cronenberg was asked if there was anything that could repel him. “There are things that I would not like to see, but they are very specific. I don’t like crueltyespecially the cruelty towards children (…) I will not say that it shocks me but I do not like to watch, “he acknowledged.

And yet, in the first minutes of the film, as revealed by the first comments, you see a child who ends up suffocated. Perhaps that is where the enigmatic charm of this master of horror passes: his constant oscillation between the contradictions of pleasure and horror.