It is not new to that for David Cronenberg suffering, pain, can be a way, strange or not, will remain in every spectator, to feel pleasure. the character of Kristen Stewart in Crimes of the futurean extremely nervous woman says it very clearly: “Surgery is the new sex”.

As if the Canadian director were retracing his steps, because in this orgy in which there are characters who act and exhibit atrocities, there is a lot that remembers Accident (1996), and also to his 1970 film of the same title, albeit director of oriental promises they say they have no relationship points.

obsessed with the body

The human body is, once again, the center of the director’s gaze. The fly. yes inside squash the characters gloated as in a secret cult, erotically aroused by road accidents, here the pain or lack of it is fundamental.

The first scene or sequence is certainly creepy and we will not advance or spoil it. But it sets the tone of the film to be developed.

We are in the not-so-distant future where human bodies are changing. It wouldn’t necessarily be an evolution. Or if. For example, there are those who can ingest plastic. It seems that the feeling of pain, yes, is a thing of the past. And the bodies, or at least some, like that of the protagonist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensenwhich is like putty in Cronenberg’s hands) can grow new internal organs.

Saul, who when wandering the soulless streets wears a cloak that covers his head and looks like a monk, performs, aided by Caprice (Léa Seydoux), a former trauma surgeon (?). He sleeps in a strange cradle and feeds sitting on a very strange chair. What does the performance consist of? Caprice takes a scalpel, cuts Saul’s body, extracts the organs, and tattoos them in front of the eyes (and cameras) of the audience, who squeeze to follow the scene.

Cronenberg is also interested in discussing how the state, or the government, can directly interfere with or control this private activity. Saul has to turn to Wippet (Don McKellar) and his assistant Timlin (Kristen Stewart), in a unit called New Vices, or something like that.

Here there are characters who no longer feel repulsion in the face of possible calamities (luckily the protagonist is not like that, when they ask him for something unheard of. And we’ll see what he will do). But, for example, Saul, when faced with a situation that would require a commitment, warns that he no longer feels sex like he used to. “I’m not very good at old sex,” he will say.

Transgression, fetishism, existential doubt, uncertainty. These are all topics addressed by Cronenberg, with those climates like this the naked lunch, in a film in which we (and we) are asked if we will be able to adapt to technological changes, to mutations. To a world perhaps without physical pain, but in which psychological trauma prevails, and makes it difficult not only relationships, but human existence.

Rare, but not extravagant, complex and not at all complacent, Crimes of the future It leaves us worse than how we got into the cinema. Indifference is not possible.

“Crimes of the future”

Good

Drama / Science Fiction. Canada / United Kingdom, 2022. 107 ‘, no evaluation. Of: David Cronenberg. With: Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar. Stay: Leopoldo Lugones of the San Martino Theater. And from 29 July, on MUBI.