David Cronenberg is back! The crimes of the future, presented in competition at Cannes, proves that the Canadian filmmaker, although absent from the screens (and therefore from the festival) since Maps To The Stars in 2014, still has some under the hood. And not just a little.
“When people ask me why I waited so long to make a new film, I answer that I just took the time to live,” he confides to 20 minutes. This break was beneficial to him. The director of 79 Printemps brought together Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart for a philosophical, aesthetic and erotic tale that speaks of art, love and the evolution of a human species in full decline.
Banish the “old sex”
“It’s a film that I wrote in 2000, explains David Cronenberg. I was inspired by the idea that the human species must evolve to survive in minds as well as in bodies. Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen, lovers who banished the “old sex” from their relationship, replaced it with public performances as bizarre as they are titillating. It generates organs through a very special bed. She tattoos them during popular public surgeries. “This couple thus gives a new meaning to inner beauty. The film can be disturbing, which amuses me, it is true that it is frankly not for everyone,” admits David Cronenberg.
Contrary to what he had anticipated, quite a few guests left the screening on Monday evening. Some looked away during the overly graphic plastic surgery or autopsy scenes, but the loud applause at the end of the screening proved that David Cronenberg hit the nail on the head. “If Viggo Mortensen looks like me physically in The Crimes of the Future, it’s because this film is very personal to me, confides the filmmaker. He’s as optimistic as I am about our ability to adapt to anything. Including physical mutations that would effectively solve plastic pollution problems.
The filmmaker turns out to be surprisingly visionary. “When I recently learned that a surgeon had engraved his initials on the liver of a patient, I understood that reality had exceeded my fiction”, says David Cronenberg. We know that Vincent Lindon, the president of the jury, likes both societal films and atypical works like Titanium by Julia Ducournau which he came to present at Cannes last year. He could be seduced by The Crimes of the Future which is both. Both beautiful and – there is no denying it – divisive, this film bewitches and disturbs in the most seductive way.