David Cronenberg’s Movies, Ranked: From ‘Crimes of the Future’ to ‘The Fly’
15.03.2023 - 19:29
/ variety.com
Variety ranks the films of David Cronenberg. Having nothing in common with his 2022 film of the same name, the 1970 “Crimes of the Future” is best seen as an early artifact of Cronenberg’s obsessions with flesh and sex.
An art-house film developed when he was a student, the director wears nearly every other hat on this project as well, writing, producing, shooting and editing it. For a microbudget production, it looks quite sharp, with the filmmaker showing a keen eye for creative blocking and camera placement.
Yet the experimental vibe makes this “Crimes” more of a curio than anything else, as the oppressive voiceover and nasty plot — heavy on foot fetishism and pedophilia — definitely limits rewatch value. Based on David Henry Hwang’s play of the same name, Cronenberg’s story about a French diplomat’s 20-year affair with a Peking opera performer feels oddly too classy for the filmmaker who would just a few years later start “Crash,” his adaptation of J.G.
Ballard’s novel of the same name, with four sex scenes in a row. Jeremy Irons navigates with sensitivity the seeming impossibility of his character René Gallimard’s ignorance of the truth about his Chinese lover, while John Lone does not quite manage to square the circle of Song Liling’s subterfuge on behalf of the People’s Republic, his actual feelings for Gallimard and his generally conflicted sexuality.
Nevertheless a well-intentioned and self-aware adaptation of Hwang’s source material, Cronenberg stages the unlikely but apparently loosely true story with typical proficiency, but seemingly little personal investment. Cronenberg’s feature debut is cleverly presented as an educational film about test subjects granted telepathy, who are encouraged to test their
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