Surgery is the new sex.
Do we need a new sex?
Oh, yes.
Boy, I really wanted to like this movie, but I gotta say, I just didn’t. It had a lot going for it. Obviously, it’s Cronenberg returning to the body horror genre. Viggo Mortensen is an actor that I really like and who I think doesn’t work enough; and I actually think he’s done his best work with Cronenberg. I’m a fan of Lea Seydoux all the way back to Blue is the Warmest Color and I’m always done for a new Kristin Stewart performance. But, man, this movie really worked only sporadically for me.
There are just a lot of script problems, in my opinion. The movie is predicated on this notion of humanity having lost the ability to feel pain which has allowed for the rise of kind of “designer surgery,” I guess or “performance art surgery.” Or “surgery in lieu of sex?” But just by coincidence infections have also stopped happening, like people just don’t get infections anymore which is sure lucky, since it’s the only way all this designer surgery could be happening. It’s not that I think positing that humanity no longer gets infections is stupid on its own; it’s just so obviously only a plot convenience. And I have to admit that I don’t really get the whole thing about people not feeling pain anymore. I mean, the idea of surgery/extreme body-modification being the “new sex” is not a bad idea; it’s disturbing and I feel like it’s actually been kind of done before, but maybe that’s because it’s ultimately just a restatement of the old pain=pleasure trope which is, far as I’m concerned, an evergreen. But I don’t understand the point of it if people aren’t feeling pain. Does that make sense? I get what Cronenberg’s going for if surgery is giving people intense pain and that pain is the new pleasure, but if surgery isn’t creating any kind of intense physical sensation, how is it the new sex or the new pleasure? I guess I find the painlessness of this body horror to kind of rob it of its horror . . . I mean, isn’t the horror wrapped up in the suffering?
Those are just some foundational problems. I think the movie also suffers from failing to keep the audience informed on what’s going on. I don’t need a movie to hand-hold, but I feel like there are just some serious pieces of information missing, especially as we move toward the end of the film. No spoilers, but there’s a moment where a couple of characters have an extremely intense emotional reaction to something happening and we, the audience, have no idea why. At another point, a couple of characters who have shown no violent tendencies whatsoever up to that point just suddenly turn into serial killers and start murdering people and I have no idea why they even killed the people they killed. And I’m saying this feeling like I paid attention. I wonder if the script is this problematic or if this film was, if you’ll pardon the joke, hacked up in post-production. These plot related problems almost feel like editing problems, like whole scenes might have gotten cut out of this movie.
And I have to say that I also really didn’t like Mortensen’s performance. The character he’s playing is an artist of some kind who is constantly developing vestigial organs and constantly having them removed by his artistic/sexual partner, played by Lea Seydoux, in public surgeries that are also performance pieces. I thought his performance vacillated a lot from scene to scene and his “sick” acting just wasn’t good. Also, while we’re on the subject . . . I found parts of this movie to be unintentionally comedic. Like there’s this organic chair that people sit in to eat because it’s supposed to move around in such a way as to aid digestion and I think it’s supposed to be horrifying and disturbing and I honestly just couldn’t stop laughing every time one of those damn things was on screen.
What did I like? I liked some elements of the world Cronenberg created. It’s relentlessly gloomy and I liked the way we’re given glimpses at the dystopian society where all this is taking place. There were elements of weird bureaucracies, like the Organ Registry where Kristin Stewart works, and I liked the way the movie juxtaposed the organic, alien technologies with the retro approach to filing systems. It’s a world where automated surgery machines exist, but I don’t think computers or cell-phones do and I liked that vibe. Some of his ideas are great in that kind of wacky Cronenberg way; the concept of an “Inner Beauty Contest” is an inspired bit of satire, for instance. And, in a really surprising development, I thought that Scott Speedman, an actor I’ve never really liked, gave the best performance of the film as a grief-stricken and haunted character. I liked the way the script kept him at the edges of the film as a kind of mystery for a lot of the movie and I liked the rawness of his performance; the performances were overall too studied and technical in my opinion, though I did enjoy Kristen Stewart’s scenes, and I thought that Speedman brought humanity to his character, something lacking from the others.
But, on the whole, this one just fell flat to me. It’s a combination of script and performances I think that kept me overly confused by the plot and distant from the characters. I was looking forward to this one, but I was trying to moderate my expectations, so I don’t think it’s as simple as me just being overhyped. I think it’s just a very flawed movie and, while I haven’t seen every Cronenberg out there, I’ll say it’s easily my least favorite of his movies, maybe the only one of the ones I’ve seen that I just flatly didn’t like. 2 stars.
tl;dr – imaginative world-building and some fine supporting performances can’t ultimately distract from the glaring script problems or the emotional deadness of the lead performances. 2 stars.