The Nest

David Cronenberg – 2014 – Canada

Short film by David Cronenberg that transpires in a single 9-minute take and consisting of a consultation between a “breast surgeon” and a disturbed young woman, Celestine, who wants her left breast removed because it is infested with insects.  The doctor, voiced by Cronenberg, is heard but not seen; the film’s point-of-view throughout provided by a camera worn on his head, so that we are always looking at the patient at a slightly downward angle.  As much as in all of Cronenberg’s features since Spider (2002), madness is center stage.  Aside from the disconcerting fact that the actress plays the entire scene topless, every other detail in this compressed film is a little off too.  The conversation takes place in a garage instead of an office, and the doctor displays increasingly unprofessional quirks, such as making no effort to dissuade Celestine from her urge to be mutilated.  Eventually, the doctor not only validates the patient’s delusions but begins to reveal that he may be no less disturbed.  He expresses concern about the operation, not because it is unnecessary, but because he is not sure how he’ll deal with the wasp-like inspects once an incision is made in the breast.  Thought not graphic, The Nest is a throwback to the dramas of infection and disease for which Cronenberg’s early films were known, and even to the entomological obsessions of The Fly (1986), Naked Lunch (1991) and Spider.  I suppose it also has something to say about a society in which psychiatrists and plastic surgeons seem barely healthier than their customers and quite ready to play along with the most extreme delusions if it will keep them in business.