For Cinema Scope 91 (online now), an essay on Cronenberg's latest, ahead of an interview with Cronenberg by Don "Wippet" McKellar. Short version is that Cronenberg somehow manages to maintain all the expected sci-fi trappings while also pointing up to the limits of the allegorical readings that sci-fi narratives are so conducive to—that is, the limitations of reading its future solely in relation to our present. Excerpt below:
David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future may be marked as a “return”…
It's amazing to me that someone could watch this film and write, as Dave Kehr does, about how "Hui's anxiousness to assure the audience that she's presenting the unvarnished truth automatically raises some suspicions." In both style and plot, the film is specifically about the challenges of representation, and if anything it demonstrates the contradictions of a phrase like "the unvarnished truth," pointing up to the assumptions and limitations of naturalism and realism. To borrow from Alain Robbe-Grillet (whom Hui…
For a film that’s predicated on gradual seduction and about looking/painting as a conduit for or expression of love, this opts for some rather unproductive presentations of time. The sense of daily ritual is poorly evoked: scenes are given just enough narrative information so we get a sense of the plot, but there’s no feel for duration, or a sense of deepening interplay between the characters beyond what is required to signal such developments. The fireside scene should be a…
