If it's true that David Cronenberg has been mulling over the details of Crimes of the Future for the better part of two decades, then the final film is proof that the Professor of Body Horror never made it past his first page of notes. After nearly 10 years out of the spotlight, Cronenberg's return to the big time feels pretty much exactly like what I, an avid Cronenberg agnostic, have grown to expect from my fellow Canuck on one of his worst days: a film full of interesting, visually driven ideas and not much else to thread them together.

The premise of a world in which pain has been eradicated and surgeries become performative demonstrations of synthetic organ development is one with some potential, to be sure, but Crimes of the Future, as a cohesive whole, feels like Cronenberg stopped thinking about where to take the plot once he got that idea out of his mind. Thematically, Cronenberg seems to be treading similar water as the actual best Canadian director working today when he made Blade Runner 2049, only that film actually structured its "meaning of life" questions around a narrative that actually... you know, goes somewhere.

Far too much is left hanging in Crimes of the Future for any of what we do wind up with to sink in, and that goes for both the story and the performances. We all love Viggo Mortensen, but his recent string of disses towards people like my boy Pedro Almodóvar and Julia Ducournau feels especially out-of-pocket when his grumbly ass is showing up in shit like this, let alone with this much of a non-presence. Léa Seydoux is fine in what's her second-best of two Cannes appearances this year, but the only performer here that Cronenberg seems to make any decent use of is Kristen Stewart. She may be in the movie for barely a fraction of the runtime, but Cronenberg actually makes the wise decision to, rather than downplay the actress's famous fidgetiness (as Pablo Larraín did for her best performance), actually play it up for its potential "creep" factor that I didn't even notice was buried there until now.

Crimes of the Future seems to be getting the expected responses from those seeing the film; David Cronenberg fanatics are singing its praises to high heaven, his skeptics are making the expected headlines by walking out of the premiere, and those of us in the middle are left wondering which of those reactions Cronenberg even cared to induce. I guess the one thing we Quebecers actually do have over the rest of Canada is the quality of our directorial exports...

2022 Ranked.

Cannes 2022.
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