Movie review: Surgery, sex and superfluous human organs converge in David Cronenberg’s ‘Crimes of the Future’
Early on in David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” a speculative horror-comedy as wildly deranged as it is beautifully controlled, we witness a live demonstration that functions as an art show, a medical procedure and a very public seduction. The nearly naked man encased in the large, mechanized sarcophagus is Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen), who has willingly turned his body into a living, breathing, lightly bleeding fresco. The woman working deftly on his insides is Caprice (Léa Seydoux), though instead of scrubs she wears a thin-strapped evening gown, and she uses what looks like a rubbery video-game console to control the scalpels that will slice her partner open.
Saul, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open, takes intense pleasure in these probing, penetrative sensations. Caprice clearly does as well, breathing heavily as she presses the console against her body and fingers the
