Sex drive, David Cronenberg-style. With Cronenberg’s career turning full circle with the return to Body Horror in Crimes of the Future, what better time to revisit one of his most controversial mid-career highlights? Few filmmakers have been so fixated on the human body as the vessel of desire while also probing the outer limits of carnal recreation… just as Seth Brundle wants to escape the confines of his physical form in The Fly, so the car-crash fetishists who orbit JG Ballard’s metropolis here (they include James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Holly Hunter and Elias Koteas) obsessively seek a fusion of metal and flesh… fender bender as the ultimate orgasm, always just tantalizingly out of reach. Crash is a sleekly seductive sex comedy stripped of passion, laughter, comedy and human connection.
In the UK, Crash was banned by several councils after a tabloid controversy spearheaded by the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail, newspapers which failed to appreciate the witty nihilistic comedy inherent in Cronenberg’s circular couplings. “Some of the most perverted acts and theories of sexual deviance I have ever seen propagated in mainline cinema,” fumed veteran critic Alexander Walker. “The point at which a liberal society must draw the line,” pronounced the Mail’s Chris Tookey. Meanwhile in North America, mogul Ted Turner disowned the movie his own company picked up. Today it’s these gentlemen’s outrage which seems perverse. Beautifully contained, the film is dispassionate auto-erotica, clinical, uncomfortably numb, and very deeply in sync with our times.
Content Considerations: Perverse & sexually explicit scenes
Media Partner
David Cronenberg
James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, Rosanna Arquette
Canada
1996
English
Special Jury Prize, Cannes 1996
Book Tickets
Friday July 31
Sunday August 02
Thursday August 06
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits
Executive Producer
Jeremy Thomas, Robert Lantos
Producer
David Cronenberg
Screenwriter
David Cronenberg
Cinematography
Peter Suschitzsky
Editor
Ronald Sanders
Original Music
Howard Shore
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Casino
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Ghost in the Shell
This seminal anime which inspired James Cameron and the Wachowskis, anticipates how AI technology encroaches on the human domain in ways we can scarcely comprehend. "A work of profound and melancholic beauty." Daily Telegraph
La Haine
This angry French thriller about alienated kids (a skinhead, an Arab, and an African) in the working class outskirts of Paris plays like a cross between Do the Right Thing and Mean Streets. French cops turned their backs on the red carpet at Cannes.
Crash
Sex drive, David Cronenberg-style. The car-crash fetishists who orbit Cronenberg's metrosexual Toronto (they include James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Deborah Unger) obsessively seek a fusion of metal and flesh... Fender bender as the ultimate orgasm.
Trainspotting
Danny Boyle's blistering movie was a sensation in 1996: a kick in the teeth of old school British kitchen sink realism, it fearlessly transformed the dire circumstances of Edinburgh heroin addicts into an experience by turns exhilarating and devastating.
Fargo
Have the Coen brothers ever made a more satisfying movie than Fargo? This grisly comedy pits one of cinema's most pure-hearted cops (Frances McDormand's pregnant cop, Marge Gunderson) against the machinations of weak and mercenary men.
Lone Star
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90s Mystery Movie + Trivia Night
And now for a shot in the dark... We're not announcing the Mystery Movie in advance, so you'll have to take a leap of faith. We can say it was released between January 1990 and January 2000, and it's not already showing elsewhere in this series. As an added enticement we're going to throw in a 90s movie trivia night with your ticket — plus prizes!
Princess Mononoke
A mystical fight between humans and the Animal Gods of the forest. Ashitaka, the last prince of a dying race, struggles to find a way for both sides to co-exist. But the fighting only becomes more and more bloody and all hope seems to be lost…
Gummo
Harmony Korine was just 24 when he made Gummo. It's become a cult favourite as much for its singularity as anything else: it's a strange, misshapen beast, a slice of beat poetry translated into experimental film.
Jackie Brown
Take half a dozen characters who know they're in a fix, and give them half a million dollars to fight over. Tarantino's crime movie (his best) transcends genre in large part because in Pam Grier and Robert Forster it gives us people we truly care about.
The Big Lebowski
The Coens' whacky, warped slacker generation riff on Raymond Chandler, a shaggy dog story which delights in going sideways at every turn. Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and what he really wants is to get his rug back...