David Cronenberg‘s Crimes of the Future, which I caught last night, is basically a play — a dialogue-driven, restricted-locale chamber piece. I felt respect and fascination — the scheme is nothing if not disciplined — and there’s never any doubt that you’re watching a thoughtful, rigorously sculpted effort by a grade-A auteur.

But (and I liked this aspect) it’s quite removed from the kind of gross-out horror film aesthetic that your midnight-movie crowd might enjoy. It’s not elevated horror but a kind of perversely erotic body-probe mood piece, and if you’re the kind of viewer who’s into mad energy and geysers of cinematic pizazz and gooey gore for its own sake, the likely reaction is going to be less along the lines of “holy shit!” and more in the vein of “uhm…what?”

Remove the physical-effects stuff — bizarre surgical slicings, erotic body penetration, superfluous internal organ removal — and the seaside, small-hamlet, sound-stage setting (it was shot in Athens), and you’re left with a presentation that could have been staged at Manhattan’s Cherry Lane theatre or…whatever, on Philco Playhouse back in the early to mid ’50s.

Set in a bizarre future in which pain has been eliminated (hence the various surgeries and excavations without anesthetics) and people are growing strange organs in their chest and stomach cavities, Crimes focuses on a performance-artist couple (Viggo Mortensen‘s “Saul Tenser”‘s and Léa Seydoux‘s “Caprice”) whose show involves the removal of said organs before paying audiences.

Did I mention that Caprice is into tattoo-ing Saul’s organs? (She is, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out why or to what end.) And the hanging, tentacled, oyster-like bed devices that Saul sleeps or meditates in, and a scene in which he and Caprice (naked as jaybirds) share some kind of sexual communion? And that you need to chew on the concept of “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome”?

The main thing is that these flesh slicings and subsequent icky probes are a turn-on for all concerned. You’ve read this before, but the film’s most quoted line is “surgery is the new sex.”

A secondary couple (Don McKellar‘s “Wippet” and Kristen Stewart‘s “Timlin”) are investigators at the National Organ Registry. Admirers of Saul and Caprice, they’re both tingling with anticipation about watching their act.

The key plot element is about Saul deciding whether to include in the show an autopsy of a recently murdered young boy — a kid who had become some kind of plastic-eating mutant. I’ll leave out mentioning his killer, but the boy’s father (Yorgos Karamihos), a guy who eats purple chocolate bars with curious chemical components, is the one pimping the autopsy to Saul.

Cronenberg wrote Crimes of the Future almost a quarter-century ago — in 1998 — and in a 5.23 interview with IndieWire’s Eric Kohn insisted “that he hadn’t changed a word of his original draft when production resources finally came together last year,” Kohn writes.

Cronenberg: “The human condition is the subject of my filmmaking and all art. Right now, these are things that are intriguing in terms of where people are and how they’re living.”

The subhead of Kohn’s article states that Cronenberg “elaborate[s] on the [film’s] complex themes,” and yet at no point in the piece do Kohn or Cronenberg even mention, much less discuss, a somewhat related present-day parallel — the fact that over the last few years gender ideology has brought about surgical alterations in young bodies — puberty blockers, breast removals, genital surgery, other transitional procedures.

In a 5.22 chat with Deadline‘s Anthony D’Alessandro, Armageddon Time director-writer James Gray delivered a neat assessment of the stink factor in mainstream gladiator cinema.

He basically said that CG comic-book spectacle films are systematically draining the poetry, music and gravitas out of the moviegoing experience.

Once in a blue moon a big franchise film will hit the magic button and deliver something transcendent. One example was last December’s SpiderMan: No Way Home, which I said over and over should be Best Picture-nominated. But mostly they don’t do this. Mostly they just make money.

Gray argues that the big studios “should be willing to lose money for a couple of years on art film divisions, and in the end they will be happier.”

In less extremist terms, Gray is suggesting that the big boys should consider reverting to the ’90s and early aughts system in which specialty divisions made smaller films — films that weren’t expected to bring in huge profits but didn’t necessarily lose money. Which means, of course, that above-the-title talent would have to accept lower fees for making these films. (And there’s the rub.)

HE version: The studios should at least be willing to make smarthouse flicks with a reasonable shot at breaking even or becoming modestly profitable.

Francois Truffaut once said that when one of the films produced by his company, Les Films du Carrosse, reached break even he and his colleagues would pop open a bottle of champagne.

#Cannes2022 ‘Armageddon Time’ Director James Gray On Why Studios Should Be Able To Lose Money On Art Specialty Divisions https://t.co/SgodYB80uM pic.twitter.com/Zno5g6uVQz

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) May 22, 2022

Brett Morgan‘s David Bowie doc seems innately exciting (and how could it not be?); Park Chan-Wook‘s Decision to Leave looks and sounds exactly like a PCW film. Those actors generating those oppressive actorish expressions…God!

Come hell or high water, Hollywood Elsewhere intends to see the following films today (Monday, 5.23): (a) Park Chan- Wook‘s Decision to Leave (Salle Debussy, 4:30 pm); (b) David Cronenberg‘s Crimes of the Future (Salle Debussy, 9:45 pm), and (c) Brett Morgen‘s Moonage Daydream (David Bowie doc, 12 midnight, Grand Lumiere).

Don’t kid yourself — Park Chan-Wook has always been a high-style genre wallower. I was willing to play along with Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, but Stoker is where I drew the line and said “all right, that’s it!…no more!” By the time The Handmaiden came along I was too alienated to respond.

For years I’ve been hoping that PCW would stop playing to the gallery (i.e., sensation-mongers, fans of visual-for-visual’s-sake) and cut the shit and calm down and use his considerable skills to make a real, serious-minded adult film. But year in and year out, he’s refused. He’s now 58 years old — what’s he gonna do, change?

From Scott Feinberg…

Set 21 years ago in Masshad, Iran, Ali Abassi’s Holy Spider is a disturbing (to put it mildly), fact-based drama about Saeed Hanaei (Mehdi Bajestani), a serial killer of prostitutes.

The murders are ghastly enough, but a double-down comes when, post-capture, Hanaei is bizarrely supported by fanatical zealots who believe he has done Allah’s bidding.

The first half is pretty much a straightforward crime drama. After graphically depicting two of Hanaei’s grisly killings, it follows an intrepid female reporter (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi) who risks life and limb to bring about his arrest.

I can’t call this section any more than decent — efficient and good enough, but not exactly brimming with style or suspense or cinematic flair.

The diseased social reaction among his fans in the second half is what grabs you. You’re left thinking “really?…a sizable contingent of Mashhad citizens cheered a serial killer because he was helping to rid the streets of streetcorner hookers? Who thinks like that? What kind of diseased culture?,” etc.

But then of course, this is Iran and the Masshad faithful were the country’s chief bumblefucks.