[Film Review] Crimes of The Future (2022)

Humans adapt to a synthetic environment, with new transformations and mutations. With his partner Caprice, Saul Tenser, celebrity performance artist, publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances.

Director David Cronenberg calls Crimes of the Future a ‘meditation on human evolution’. Meditation feels like exactly the right description for it. The more sedate, slow pace is likely to alienate some, but for those willing to sit with the characters and atmosphere, there are many rewards to be found.

Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) are artists who work together on intimate performances centred around Saul’s ability to grow new organs. Despite the popularity of their performances, a new government agency, the National Organ Registry is soon involved, looking to monitor and record these instances. This intrusion creates a desire to forge further ahead with their performances and even raise the stakes of their act.

Crimes of the Future is visually sumptuous, indulging in the detail of the performances and the technology that supports Tenser’s life. Furniture is living, breathing and constantly moving, further highlighted by the relative stillness elsewhere. Large, dark warehouses are home to performances that invite close scrutiny, switching between those wide spaces to close focuses on the ways bodies have been molded and changed.

The film’s handling of pain and dealing with a ‘rebellious body’ strike the biggest chord, with human adaptation and the desire to reframe and give meaning to difference is a dominant concern. It is tempting to read Crimes of the Future as a Greatest Hits, of sorts, with Cronenberg returning to the themes and images he has been most associated with throughout his career. That the film shares a name (although not the same subject matter) with an early, low-budget effort from 1970 adds weight to this. This is the film of an unhurried, contemplative director who is looking beyond the outwardly impressive body horror to something wider. The mix of comic beats and near-operatic eco messaging is an odd one, but the careful handling makes it work.

While depictions of pain and manipulations of the body are surface concerns and responsible for the film’s arresting imagery, the thread of intimacy between Saul and Caprice is arguably even more interesting. With so much of their lives, bodies and partnerships put into the performances, the film is concerned with the acts of intimacy they reserve for one another, away from the spectators. The trust and codependency between them finds a space in the film’s quietest moments, interrogating their relationship and the charge between them. The immersive surroundings and art spaces draw you into that world but much of the time is spent with Caprice and Saul, so a connection with the pair-no matter how strange-is essential and entirely dependent on their chemistry.

The offbeat performance styles may prove another barrier for those who do not connect with the film. However, these all contribute greatly to the overall mood and tone. Mortensen’s quiet gruffness works exceptionally well for Tensor, a man consumed by and obsessed by his own pain.Léa Seydoux brings a gentle quality to Caprice, hardly above a whisper at times but developing her own sense of independent confidence as the film progresses. Elsewhere, a fantastically twitchy performance from Kristen Stewart as government agent Timlin leaves you wanting more, as does a slightly calmer Don McKellar’s Wippet. The collection of quirky turns is completed with small but memorable moments from deadpan duo Router (Nadia Litz) and Berst (Tanaya Beatty).

A director in a reflective space, consumed by concerns for the future and a career-long fascination with the intersection between humanity and technology creates a film that lingers rather than jolts, but undoubtedly has a lot to say.

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