✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Cinema

Crimes of the Future (2022) review ★★★★★

09 Sep 22 – 09 Sep 23, IN CINEMAS

Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart star in David Cronenberg's latest film, which delves into a bleak near-future in which human bodies adjust to a synthetic environment

By Euan Franklin on 7/9/2022

1 CW reader is interested
Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux in Crimes of the Future (Photo: Vertigo Releasing)
Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux in Crimes of the Future (Photo: Vertigo Releasing)
Crimes of the Future (2022) review 4 Crimes of the Future (2022) review Euan Franklin
It is often difficult to summarise or decode a David Cronenberg movie. He’s an enjoyably obstinate and provocative filmmaker, intent on attacking his audience with images they can’t shake off. Common threads stretching through his oeuvre include bleak science-fiction futures, creatively political characters, and grisly displays of body horror. These features make Cronenberg a gross and fascinating study, and his new film Crimes of the Future embraces all of them.


Firstly, be warned: if you’re squeamish about blood, wounds and scalpels, this won’t be your ideal cinema-going experience.


Viggo Mortensen stars as Saul Tenser, a well-known performance artist from a future where human bodies have to adjust to more synthetic environments. Evolution is accelerated via technology.



Viggo Mortensen as Saul Tenser. Photo: Vertigo Releasing

You're introduced to Saul as he lies in a large, Kafkaesque ‘bed’, shaped like a giant beetle, attached to the ceiling by slippery tentacles. He complains to his creative partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) that the bed is not easing his pain. And he is constantly in pain: he always has a cough or digestive trouble and wears a black cloak, like death personified. He displays that pain through his art, showing the ‘chaos’ of the inner self through live robotic surgery in a ‘sarcophagus’ that opens his torso for all to see.


Yep, it’s a lot.


It’s not as controversially revolting as Cronenberg anticipated prior to its Cannes premiere (despite the inevitable walk-outs), but there are scenes that give you twinges in your internal organs. The sadomasochistic sexual tension is especially uncomfortable, rising and enticing as blade pierces skin – sharing some DNA with Cronenberg’s divisive adaptation of JG Ballard's Crash.


The disturbing sexual aspects are best represented by Kristen Stewart as Timlin, a timid and horny bureaucrat. Alongside her colleague Wippit (Don McKellar), she works at the National Organ Registry, a government department that tattoos organs and logs them.


Although Mortensen and Seydoux set the screen alight with their morbidly creative chemistry, with the latter’s character wielding aesthetic ambitions of her own, it’s a seductive joy whenever Stewart enters the frame. She crafts a creepy sense of comic timing, with a fluctuating inflection to her voice – rising and falling between a squeal and a whisper – speaking the film’s unnerving central aphorism: ‘Surgery is the new sex.’



Léa Seydoux, Viggo Mortensen and Kristen Stewart as Caprice, Saul and Timlin. Photo: Vertigo Releasing

Cronenberg attaches another genre appendage to the film’s Frankensteinian body: that of an undercover cop drama, adding a noir-y suspense known only to Saul and the cynical detective Cope (Welket Bungué).


This is a slight, ignorable submission to the mainstream, like Cronenberg needed something broadly accessible to attract an audience. But the subplot magnifies the obscure world of the film: exploring the political divisions that arise from Saul and Caprice’s installations as well as from the bodies that have forcibly evolved.


The setting in question is a spare and seedy dystopia, shot in Athens, populated by strange residents who either enjoy or participate in acts of dissection. It resembles the eerie Bad City in Ana Lily Amirpour’s brilliantly unsettling film A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: both worlds are left ambiguously under-explained, except in the actions of the people living in them.


With all these penetrating elements, it’s difficult to let go of Crimes of the Future. In fact, the film is about 15 minutes too short. The ending left this critic wanting more, which is bizarre considering how uncomfortable it is. Nevertheless, it’s Cronenberg’s best film in years. A funny, enchanting gallery of the grotesque.


Crimes of the Future will be in UK cinemas on Friday 9 September.



What Crimes of the Future (2022) review
When 09 Sep 22 – 09 Sep 23, IN CINEMAS
Price £determined by cinemas
Website Click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London (Photograph: Peter Lewicki)
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London, 2023
Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings

Editor's Picks

Michelle Williams in The Fabelmans (Photo: eOne)
In cinemas this weekend: Steven Spielberg and Nan Goldin tell their creative truths
Adam Driver in White Noise, Netflix (Photo: Netflix)
London Film Festival 2022: line-up, tickets, recommendations
Penélope Cruz in Official Competition (Photo: Curzon)
Official Competition review
Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton in Three Thousand Years of Longing (Photo: EPK/United Artists Releasing)
The best movies, autumn 2022
Daniel Kaluuya in Nope (Photo: UPI)
Nope movie review
Ana de Armas in Blonde, Netflix (Photo: Netflix)
Blonde, Netflix review
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
1

Crimes of the Future

David Cronenberg

Lea Seydoux

Kristen Stewart

Viggo Mortensen

Cannes Film Festival

Cinema

2022

You might like

  • Mia Wasikowska as Agatha Wiess

    Maps to the Stars

  • Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet in Bones and All (Photo: Warner Bros.)

    Bones and All review ★★★★★

  • Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan in She Said (Photo: UPI Media)

    She Said movie review ★★★★★

  • Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing (Photo: PA Media/Sony)

    Where the Crawdads Sing movie review ★★★★★

  • The Barbie movie: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, revealed

    The Barbie movie: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling revealed in new teaser trailer



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×