Cannes Review: David Cronenberg’s ‘Crimes Of The Future’

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorOne of the most talked-about moments in David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” is the Ear Man. The character performs in an underground performance art show with his eyes and mouth sewn shut and his entire body covered in ears.Alexandra Anger and Monica Pavez were the prosthetics co-designers behind the magic in putting 36 prosthetics pieces together on Tassos Karahalios, who played Klinek.Anger explains that early discussions with Cronenberg had the character with two additional ears behind his real ears.

Clayton Davis David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” opened for general audiences this weekend without exactly lighting up the box office, which no one expected it to do.The filmography of Cronenberg has been one that has brought unadulterated respect from cinephiles, while never having the populist appeal to breakout into huge commercial translations or awards attention. While it’s never too late to become an Oscar darling (i.e., Christopher Plummer nabbing his three career Oscar noms, and win, after the age of 80), unless the King of Body Horror is going to make a drastic switch in style and genre, it would be criminal for him to have no industry acknowledgment as a prolific auteur.

Antonio Ferme editorDavid Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” has a heady premise: As a disease called “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” causes unusual organs to grow inside the body of Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), his partner (Léa Seydoux) surgically removes them in front of a live audience. Needless to say, the world-building is a bit complicated! Luckily, the director and some of his cast shed light on the dark secrets of “Crimes” during a preview night Q&A in Manhattan.Much like the audience, Cronenberg’s depiction of bodily autonomy wasn’t always clear to the lead actors.“I have to admit that I didn’t quite understand everything when I read the script at first,” Seydoux said at the Thursday night event.

World of Reel that it was indeed Stewart’s “Twilight” costar who first introduced them.Pattinson, 36, starred in two of Cronenberg’s movies — the 2012 thriller “Cosmopolis” and 2014’s “Maps to the Stars.”“It was Robert who actually introduced me to Kristen. They have developed beautifully, separately, as actors,” the Canadian filmmaker said.

Kristen Stewart is responding to the reports about her new movie.

After the “Twilight” movie series culminated in November 2012 with “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” co-stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson worked hard to leave their teen-romance roles behind. And they’ve been highly successful at it for the past ten years.

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.The iconic director, who recently worked with Kristen Stewart on Crimes of the Future and had previously cast Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis, has opened up about working with both actors together.“It was Robert who actually introduced me to Kristen,” Cronenberg told World of Reel.“They have developed beautifully, separately, as actors. Making arthouse movies and successfully carrying that off. Kristen and I had a great time and Rob and I had a great time.”On both Twilight actors and a potential forthcoming project, Cronenberg added: “For me, yeah, I can definitely think of a movie, or idea, that would be great to have them both together.“I don’t want to get into it because it wouldn’t be my next movie, however, it might be problematic since fans might expect a certain kind of relationship and that would get in the way of creating new characters for them.

David Cronenberg’s latest deep dive into body horror, “Crimes Of The Future,” had its world premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week (read our review here). And it looks like the Canadian auteur’s first film since 2014’s “Maps To The Stars” is another extreme offering.

As women in the United States are seeing their rights to safe abortions, access to reproductive health services, and contraceptives slowly being stripped away by red state governors, a recent leak revealed the conservative majority Supreme Court may strike down Roe vs. Wade, ending legal abortion.

Cannes debut yesterday (May 23), during which a number of viewers reportedly walked out – some of them within the first five minutes.The film stars Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux as performance artists who grow and remove organs onstage before a live audience, and contains a number of gory scenes.According to IGN, the film’s opening scene, in which a young boy is killed by his mother, prompted the majority of walkouts, with another scene involving Seydoux and an open wound leading to many others.Despite this, however, Deadline reports that the film still received a six minute standing ovation after credits rolled.“I’m speechless, really — this is the first time I’ve seen this movie on a screen this big,” Cronenberg said in a brief speech, “I’m very touched by your response. I hope you’re not kidding, I hope you mean it.

At a press conference for his new film “Crimes of the Future” at the Cannes Film Festival, Canadian director David Cronenberg was asked about the film’s politics and the abortion debate in America.

In David Cronenberg’s latest genre twister, Crimes of the Future, Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux plays partners who are performance artists, engrossed in performing surgery (largely on the former) for public nightclub spectacle. They’re enthralled with the freedom they can take on each other’s bodies. All of this in a governing society that’s not too fond of it.

seeming) celebration and immersion in all things Bowie. You won’t get a biographical breakdown, except in bits and pieces and through the process of absorption rather than explanation; what you will get is an assemblage of live clips and interviews and animation and effects plucked from throughout the Bowie archives and knitted together with an extraordinarily dense and at times even assaultive sound design.In case you’ve forgotten, the last line of the chorus in the song that gives this movie its title is “freak out in a moonage daydream,” which is pretty much what this movie does.If that description scares you, then “Moonage Daydream” might not be the Bowie movie for you.

Kristen Stewart just gave us another great red carpet moment!

David Cronenberg has unfinished business with the future, which is tricky, seeing as it already constitutes a significant slice of his past. His new film — titled “Crimes of the Future,” as in committed by rather than during that span of time — finds the master on the other side of his extended sojourn in high-minded literary adaptation, biopic quasi-prestige, and Tinseltown satire, back to playing the body-horror hits on which he made his name.

There’s a lot of weird fetishes in this world, which we won’t go into, but for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, the new sex is surgery.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticMost filmmakers who want to unsettle you in a horror movie will reach for a familiar set of tools: slashers, demons, shock cuts, soundtracks that go boom! in the night. But in “Crimes of the Future,” the writer-director David Cronenberg is out to provoke and disturb us with something far more traumatic than mere monsters.Am I talking about the fact that in the distant future where the film is set, human beings grow mysterious new organs in their bodies? Or that having those organs removed through surgery has become, for a creepy rebel aesthete named Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), a species of performance art? Or that people no longer experience physical pain, and will therefore stand in the street late at night cutting each other for cheap thrills, as if they were shooting heroin in a back alley? Or that surgery itself, as someone puts it, has become “the new sex”? If you see “Crimes of the Future,” you’ll witness all of these outrages, and a few more besides.

“Crimes of the Future” will be David Cronenberg’s final film — never believe a director who says they’re quitting — but it definitely feels like a closing argument, one that both reaffirms the filmmaker’s favorite themes and stylistic choices while also reflecting a shift in his point of view.We’ve been here before with Cronenberg; his 1999 “Existenz” also had the feel of a greatest-hits collection. But for audiences starved for brash choices from one of the cinema’s boldest living provocateurs, even a rehash seems fresher than corporate-assembled, focus-group-approved content.Should this be the Canadian auteur’s final feature, he won’t be leaving on a high note: “Crimes of the Future” won’t be remembered alongside masterpieces like “Dead Ringers,” “The Fly,” “The Brood,” or “Crash.” Nonetheless, as a writer-director, Cronenberg continues to plumb his obsessions, both narrative and visual, and he brings enough energy and bravado to the mix to make this an oft-told story that he’s recounting as though for the first time.Borrowing the title (but little else) from one of his earliest films, “Crimes of the Future” takes place in a near-future dystopia where pain has become a thing of the past and surgery is both a hot trend and the source of a new brand of performance art.

Body horror king David Cronenberg is back with his erotic sci-fi thriller “Crimes of The Future.” The next screens at the Cannes Film Festival soon and NEON releases it domestically on June 8. And while Cronenberg gets a lot of credit for his own work that made it on the big screen, there are a handful of popular sci-fi projects that Cronenberg seemingly had a direct/indirect hand in helping develop–especially their body horror elements.

Nobody does body horror better than David Cronenberg. And in his first movie since 2014’s “Maps To The Stars,” it looks like Cronenberg returns to what he does best: a visceral, extreme take on humanity as we careen into the future.