CRIMES OF THE FUTURE Cast + Crew QA, TIFF 2022

Set in a dystopic future where biotechnologybased mutation is increasingly the norm and basic emotions are discomfiting anachronisms, David Cronenbergs Crimes of the Future shares obvious similarities with his body horror classics. The ostensible hero, notorious avantgarde performer Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), grows unique tumours, which his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux) excises in live performances. His outlaw status and repugnant physical deterioration suggest a familiar trajectory, echoing the accelerated decay and mutations of earlier protagonists like The Flys Seth Brundle. But unlike the outlaw figures of Cronenbergs earlier films (who pursued their mad obsessions in private and functioned as allegorical artist figures), Tenser is a famous artist, and a boundarypushing one. His function is to suffer for his audience, literally giving up pieces of his body for their enlightenment and, more significantly, their amusement an amusement which is heavily eroticized but cant be separated