David Cronenberg divides more than he shocks
With “The Crimes of the Future”, the Canadian director scared off some festival-goers and confused almost everyone else.
Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart, the trio of “Crimes of the future”. © Serendipity Point Films 2021.
Nikos Nikolopoulos
The hypothesis of a scandal. Or a controversy. In Cannes, it’s what we hope for or what we fear, it depends. David Cronenberg’s latest opus, ‘The Crimes of the Future’, was an ideal candidate to disrupt festival moods. However, despite rumors of an extremely violent film, even bordering on unsustainable, it did not have the effect of “Irreversible”, nor of “Grande Bouffe”, nor of Haneke’s “Funny Games”, and even less, in a completely different register, of “The mother and the whore” by Eustache (restored this year and shown at Cannes Classics). Or even the unfortunate Kechiche three years ago with “Mektoub my Love: Intermezzo”.