‘Crimes of the Future’: Plastic Eaters

Awarded this year with the Donostia Prize, Canadian David Cronenberg has been absent for some time, eight years since he premiered ‘Maps to the Stars’, with which Julianne Moore won the Silver Palm for Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. In this long wait, the director has chosen to borrow the title of one of his first feature films, ‘Crimes of the future’, but to tell a completely new story. A visceral futuristic science fiction parable with which the director gets back in shape.

‘Crimes of the future’ must be taken as a perverse fable in which the director paints a ferocious portrait of the dangers of climate change and how the environmental crisis provokes a series of responses of dubious scientific morality. This is the background of a feature film that, really, chooses to raise these issues, without wanting to do a real dissemination exercise, but rather they are used as a mere tool for a dark story, which manages to make hair stand on end. shocking scenes that remind you that whoever directs this film is the author of titles like ‘Crash’ or ‘The fly’. Indeed, It is his boldest visual proposition in recent years.

Although it was sold as Cronenberg’s return to horror, this genre doesn’t really appear, being more of a thriller with a certain steampunk spirit, with moments that seem inspired by Mamoru Oshii’s ‘Ghost in the Shell’to which much of the Western science fiction of the late 90s and early 2000s is indebted. However, returning to what was said in the previous paragraph, it is its explicit sequences that provoke a hypnotic feeling of disgust, the kind that shows something unpleasant that encourages you to look between aversion and pleasure.

Steampunk aesthetics and hypnotic grotesque sequences

There you can see Cronenberg’s hand and that is what exalts the film, since its science fiction story is not very different from the one that has raised different titles such as the iconic ‘Gattaca’ or ‘Minority relationship’ to others more. authors such as ‘Lobster’ or ‘Ex Machina’. Also, his story of him is much less complex and touches fewer ethical sticks than he should have, despite the fact that he did. a plot in which humanity could be forced to eat plastic, a material that has ended up being a double-edged sword for world society, given its improper use. This, of course, does not mean that this is one of the director’s best work since “A Dangerous Method”.

And he succeeds thanks also to his splendid cast. Viggo Mortensen stands out as the artist who brought the operations and modifications of the body to the sublime, transforming those tumors and new organs that burst into his body into art. Her performance is completed by Léa Seydoux, who shows her undeterred streak as the artist’s faithful companion. Furthermore, both pose this question of the limits of art, in a more refined yet similar line to that of Ruben Östlund with his latest works. Also mention for Kristen Stewart, who utters the most emblematic phrase of the film –“surgery is the new sex”– and this still surprises with a character playing both sidesshowing how the performer moves like a fish in the water with extreme roles.

‘Crimes of the future’ works like futuristic parable with a certain steampunk touch, thanks to its cast and a series of sequences made to make the stomach spin. After the irregular ‘Maps towards the stars’ and ‘Cosmópolis’, Cronenberg reformulates the controversial vein of ‘Crash’ in a contemporary proposal that manages to become a fascinating work, capable of horrifying and captivating at the same time, something that only great as Cronenberg are able to reach.

Note: 7

The best: The grotesque of its visceral scenes.

Worse: In reality, its environmental message is very simple.