David Cronenberg – 2022 – Canada
Hype about Cannes screening walk-outs and vomiting audiences is a little overblown, in my opinion; surely just hype to generate interest. No one acquainted with Cronenberg's films will be mortified or even terribly fazed by the most graphic details in this film. To say "Cronenberg is back" may be too obvious, but it is true in more ways than one. Not only is it wonderfully superior to his previous film, Maps to the Stars, (which I consider to be his weakest film), but it is also his most superficially "Cronenbergian" film since the days of The Fly, Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch. A sardonic debate on ecology, art, paraphilia and revolutionary politics, the film takes place in a world where physical pain has mysteriously disappeared and fetishized surgical procedures are the basis of both performance art and erotic expression. While it admittedly feels familiar as a mélange of common Cronenberg themes, I found it compelling throughout. I'm not sure why it uses the same title as his great 1970 feature, though, as it's not a remake at all, except for the one detail concerning a character whose body produces organs of unknown purpose.
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