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The Cannes Film Festival Premiere Of David Cronenberg’s “Crimes Of The Future”


Crimes of the Future at Cannes Film Festival
David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the future” Premiere's at Cannes


Reported by: Ekaterina Sheviliakova


The premiere of David Cronenberg’s film “Crimes of the future” was attended by many enthusiastic fans that had gathered since late afternoon to get a glimpse of the cast. The red carpet premiere took place at the Palace of the festival. A star-studded cast consists of Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, Don Mckeller, Welket Bunque and the director David Cronenberg.

The film director, known for his science fiction films, with Crimes of The Future melds his signature style with a luxuriant retro-futuristic story about artists at the end of the world – or maybe at the beginning of a new one. “Crimes of the Future’ is set probably in the future, but without a specific indication on when exactly. Cronenberg’s presumable future is portrayed as a gloomy dark metropolis where people sleep in strange moving anesthetic beds, gather to see others perform surgery and some can eat plastic. Most of the population of this dark future scenario have become immune to diseases and pain and some have started developing mysterious new body parts.

The art in this Cronenberg’s future is expressed only in surgery and is performed by two artists - Saul Tenser played by Viggo Mortensen and his lover – beautiful Caprice played by the stunning Lea Seydoux. Saul Tenser is a real celebrity in this strange society due to his extraordinary capacity to produce the growth of new internal organs and his partner Caprice removes these organs in front of the astonished estranged crowd.

In this extraordinary new future world is an organization that is called ‘The National Organ Registry,’ where a sensual clerk Timlin played by Kristen Stewart works. Saul comes in to register his new organs and finds special attraction with the sensual clerk Timlin who seems to be completely charmed by the man. But he says that he is no good anymore in the “old way’ of having sex. The reason is that in this future society the new sex is surgery and performing or watching it is what people really enjoy. Many scenes of the artists Caprice and other performing surgery have a touch of sensual noir.

Many features of this film are classic David Cronenberg, especially the tendency to show the grotesque, but at the same time sensual and soft body disfigurement. Some of the shadowy scenes remind us of the noir films of the past. Cronenberg actually predicted that many viewers would walk out of the screening room totally shocked from what they saw in the movie. To him, this was the sign that the film reached the result he expected. At the same time, the film is so stylized with slight sensual allure to many of the scenes that it doesn’t appear like a film that talks about ugliness or violence.

One of the main scenes of the film portraying the futuristic surgical art scene is basically a caricature of its present day fine- art counterpart. The Crimes of the Future main mystery subject remains Saul’ s accelerated “evolution syndrome” that tends to affect many other people living in this bizarre future scenario. Immediately it is not easy to understand the sense after this absurd and grotesque picture of the future portrayed by Cronenberg.

My hope during the film was that surgery wouldn’t become the “new sex’. What I have sensed in this movie is the director’s concern about climate change, pollution and the conflict between the body and the mind of the in the world’s evolution process. Still the film gives a slight feeling of hope for the population to overcome all these difficulties and to finally pass to a better stage where the normal human experience are still used and respected.



To be released on June 3 in United States, Crimes of the Future is definitely a “must-see” movie with a star-studded cast and science fiction with a noir allure which makes it so irresistible and unpredictable to watch. For more, follow on IMDB.com


For more on the Cannes Film Festival, visithttps://www.festival-cannes.com/en/

Photo credit: Getty Images



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