Friday, January 11, 2019

Step into my orifice

Just watched David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. For various reasons I was sort of doing research on Cronenberg, and also this movie had always looked like it would be interesting. Which it is.

There's no point in describing the plot in much detail, since it winds up eating itself. But basic premise: Jennifer Jason Leigh is Allegra Miller, a world-famous video game designer in a future (?) where games are played on organic devices that plug into "bioports" in your spine. Jude Law is Ted Pikul, a junior publicity flak pressed into service as her bodyguard when an anti-game sect of "realists" marks her for death. He's never had a bioport because of a "phobia about being penetrated", and that's less a double entendre than just an entendre. Nonetheless they both escape into eXistenZ, her new game.

There's certainly a strange blurring of real and artificial here. While you expect to see video games and new tech in general introduced in spotless retreats, this one seems to be getting introduced in a church basement. Also the panoply of bad movie accents on display—British actor Law isn't playing a Canadian so much as he is a goober—get worked into a pretty good joke.

This seems to be the end of the line for a certain kind of Cronenberg movie, the kind he was making for micro-budgets back in the seventies. More recent films of his have been pitched more at the mainstream, or at least look it. A History of Violence was indeed violent, but in a blunt way. eXistenZ lets him bring out his grotesque sci-fi body horror toys one more time.

2 comments:

semiconscious said...

we saw existenz maybe a year after it came out, & never again since. likely a combination of not being especially impressed & susan's distaste for some of the imagery :) ...

i'll always have a soft spot for 'videodrome', its reliance on video cassettes only making it even more charming/lovable as time passes. we also both really enjoyed 'a history of violence' & 'eastern promises'. i guess i'd consider cronenberg (like depalma) a somewhat uneven director, but also one who's always insisted on going his own way, which's admirable...

'long live the new flesh!': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwBM9pHrIKg

Ben said...

Oh, I can definitely see being turned off by the imagery. Of a few kinds, really. But I did find it to be a pretty effective black comedy.

Videodrome is on a whole different level, though. It's one of my favorite go-to movies when I'm asked about movies that are weird and/or surreal. That's a great scene, too. I love how O'Blivian keeps talking as he's getting garroted. "Oh, just one more point." Wonder what the Grim Reaper would say. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoBTsMJ4jNk

His adaptation of Naked Lunch was interesting as well.