David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” characters can feel no pain. Unfortunately, the same wasn’t true for the dozens of attendees at the Cannes premiere of the drama that walked out midway through the film, unable to stomach just exactly what was happening onscreen.The movie also earned a seven-minute standing ovation, suggesting that it could be the most polarizing title to debut at this year’s Cannes.The film reunites Cronenberg with Viggo Mortensen (“A History of Violence,” “Eastern Promises”) and also stars Cannes darlings Kristen Stewart and Lea Seydoux.
It also finds Cronenberg back in his science-fiction/horror mode for the first time since 1999’s “Existenz.” “Crimes of the Future” may not win the Palme d’Or, but it would land a prize for the weirdest movie of the festival.
Mortensen plays a performance artist who has his organs operated on in some pseudo-sexual ritual in this dystopian universe.
Stewart plays an employee at the transplant center, who in one scene purrs to him: “Surgery is the new sex.”The film includes a gory child autopsy scene, shots of bloody intestines and characters who orgasm by licking each other’s open wounds.
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