FILM REVIEW: WHEN ART INTERSECTS EVOLUTION - THE BODY POLITICS OF ‘CRIMES OF THE FUTURE’

**Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen,** and Kristen Stewart in David Cronenber’s CRIMES OF THE FUTURE.

“I don’t like what’s happening with the body - my body,” explains Viggo Mortensen’s character, Saul Tenser, when someone asks why he allows himself to have his organs removed as part of his performance art. In David Cronenberg’s latest body horror venture, CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, it is the control and manipulation of the human form that leads to pleasure, perversion, and ultimately, transcendence.

In the not-so-distant future (we do not know the exact year, but everything seems to have a post-apocalyptic vibe to it), humans are adapting to an increasingly synthetic environment. As such, the body also undergoes new mutations and transformations to adapt. In this new world, Saul Tenser (Mortensen), is a celebrated performance artist who showcases the metamorphosis of his organs, with the aid of his partner, and surgeon during these productions, Caprice (Léa Seydoux). However, when a mysterious group tries to use Saul’s fame to shed light on the next phase of human evolution, both Saul and Caprice are forced to confront not only the ramifications of this particular evolution, but what it means to their art, and especially, artistic consent.

Body horror and art collide in **CRIMES OF THE FUTURE**.

It is in this new world that pain and sexual gratification have mashed into one big, weird pot of organ stew, and in fact, pain as we have always understood it is all but gone, replaced with a very different view of the term, “pleasures of the flesh.” As Kristen Stewart’s character, Timlin, so pithily puts it, “surgery is the new sex,” and that indeed seems to be the case as we see couples out in the street, cutting into each other like broiled Cornish game hens, eyelids fluttering in pleasure, not even a yelp or cry from a knife cutting against flesh. Even Saul’s own art performances could be seen as akin to a bondage night at your average downtown nightclub. His events draw throngs of silent and respectful audiences, who raise their cameras and phones to record the titillating perversion of it all. Throughout it all, Caprice slinks around Saul, manipulating the arms of the surgical machine he lays on, fingering what looks like a toad that swallowed Thanos’ infinity stones as Saul licks his lips in ecstasy when his new organ growth is removed. In that respect, Saul and Caprice form a symbiotic relationship of submission and dominance, of artist and canvas, because though you could argue that Caprice is the actual artist in the dynamic, the dynamic doesn’t exist without Saul’s body - he is the raw material. He takes the rebellion of his own body and controls it, shapes it. It is the ultimate in human autonomy, one that is starkly contrasted these days to our current abortion rights clusterfuck (I’m looking at you, Louisiana and Oklahoma).

Cronenberg’s fascination with the human body cannot be denied, but he is not sentimental about it, and in fact, his 1996 film, CRASH and 1999’s EXISTENZ, could be seen as the more overtly erotic sister and STI-infected gamer brother to CRIMES OF THE FUTURE’s art-house uncle. CRASH in particular feels like the stronger companion piece to this film in its exploration of the eroticization of danger and death and the fragility of the body. For as in CRASH, a car collision is sexual, in CRIMES, it is the modification of the body, whether in a dancer who performs with a host of ears grafted onto his body, or an artist socialite who has jagged lines cut into her face to the gaspy wonder of the audience around her, or even Saul, whose art deals with the internal, with what you cannot immediately see. And even in this word, there is a snobbery to the art of body modification, with those who partake in external modifications (like ear guy) being more of an eye-rolling fad akin to Ugg boots and Boho chic than legitimate art. When Caprice decides to partake in it herself, you can see a shadow of disappointment cross over Saul’s face, as they are supposed to be the bastion of this progressive art world together. She might as well have gotten a Fedora hat sewn to her head.

**Kristen Stewart** and **Léa Seydoux** in **CRIMES OF THE FUTURE**.

Though CRIMES is not Cronenberg’s best work, the visuals are undeniably stunning, filled with crumbling interiors and dark catacombs and alleys. The world of CRIMES is a world in disrepair, tumbling towards decay and atrophy, where ironically, things like an autopsy pod, are the only items that make people’s eyes light up and gasp in wonder. Cinematographer Douglas Koch leans into the artistic references, often channeling the work of famed Golden Age Dutch painter, Rembrandt and the Italian painter Caravaggio in many scenes. However, many Sci-Fi fans will also be able to point to a more recent artistic inspiration for the film, that of legendary Swedish artist, H.R. Giger, whose works were used in the popular ALIEN franchise. Production Designer Carol Spier (who has teamed with Cronenberg on several of his films), creates a visual concept for the film that blends human anatomy with something otherworldly and perverse. Because his digestive system is so outta whack and is constantly changing (a major plot point), Saul has to eat in this special kind of adult high chair that looks like a human skeleton in mid-evolution. The chair jerks and jostles Saul around in a particular way to assist him in swallowing and digesting his food, a rather unsettling and surreal image.

Body modification meets the art world in **CRIMES OF THE FUTURE**.

And because this still IS a Cronenberg film, it would not be without the strange, and sensual body horror that the director has been able to cultivate and obsess over for more than 50 years. Probes are shoved into stomachs like polymer-encased dicks, mechanical alien arms slice and vivisect, and mouths and fingers delve and investigate fresh incisions with lip-smacking relish. The audience of a typical art show in this world even consist of a woman cutting back and forth into the foot of another woman, the squick of wet flesh and soft squeak of steel against bone lingering in your ears, along with their soft, erotic moans in the throes of the act.

Cronenberg has once again been able to assemble a strong cast, led in no small part by Viggo Mortensen as Saul, a man using the aberration of his body to his own artistic and transcendental ends. His body is constantly at war with himself - he coughs, hacks, retches, and grunts constantly, even his voice changes pitch as his vocal chords even seem to move and alter. He goes everywhere covered in a shroud, as though even the most benign environmental elements could have a severe impact on his strange and unknowable body. Léa Seydoux as Caprice brings a vulnerability and heart to the role that is engrossing to watch. Caprice has obviously been the shadows of Saul’s fame for awhile, and though her love and devotion to him is unwavering, she wants even more of a hands-on role with their performances, in particular, when a member of an underground group approaches the duo about taking on a new performance piece unlike anything that has ever been done before. Sadly, Kristen Stewart feels out of place in this film as a nebbish, sexually repressed bureaucrat working for the National Organ Registry. Anytime she was on camera, I felt as though she had wandered away from the set of a Woody Allen film and her character contributed nothing major to the plot. It is really Mortensen and Seydoux who are at the heart of this film.

**Viggo Mortensen** as performance artist Saul Tenser in **CRIMES OF THE FUTURE**.

Without giving any major spoilers away, the thrust of CRIMES is tied to a young boy that we meet in the opening scene, who’s bizarre act of eating a plastic trash can cements his mother’s decision to commit a horrible and disturbing deed. When Saul asks her if they performed an autopsy on the boy, what do you think they would find, she replies calmly, “outer space.” And really, this is what the crux of CRIMES is all about - the undiscovered world of what human evolution looks like and is hurtling irreparably towards. At one point, a character chastises Saul for not letting his body evolve to where it wants to go, and that instead of hacking it up as part of his art, he should be surrendering to its “fantastic natural process.” It’s this push and pull against what makes a human a human, and just how little oxygen our political figures are willing to give us autonomy over our own bodies that makes CRIMES a thought-provoking, timely, though flawed film. I shouldn’t be surprised though. Cronenberg has been getting up in our guts for years.