Cannes at Home: Day 7 – Death to Reality!
Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 9:05PM Park Chan-wook and David Cronenberg have arrived. Livening up the 75th Cannes Film Festival, the two auteurs debuted new works, prompting many to sing their hosannas in reverent tones. The Film Experience's own Elisa Giudici has declared Decision to Leave the film of the festival, a sentiment shared by many critics who've celebrated the picture's surprising romanticism and Tang Wei's performance. Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future was less ecstatically received, but the reactions are still positive. The verdict is that the film is less shocking than advertised but more elegiac in tone. Nevertheless, as the director predicted, multiple spectators walked out before the end credits rolled.
While anticipating these filmmakers' new offerings, let's remember their past works – Thirst's sicko love story and eXistenZ's visions of a violent future…
THIRST (2009)
What's Park Chan-wook's best film? The Korean maverick has directed a slew of acclaimed masterpieces in the last two decades, spanning from the Vengeance Trilogy to the erotic reveries of The Handmaiden. Oldboy is probably the consensus pick, but, for my money, Thirst is his true magnum opus. Loosely inspired by Thérèse Raquin, this erotic nightmare updates Zola's 1867 narrative to modern-day South Korea and gives the material a vampiric twist. The main plot points remain mostly the same, as does some of the novel's aqueous imagery. However, cinema perverts the French author's original intent, inverting the precepts of what was meant to be a study in temperament, an early example of literary naturalism.
Song Kang-ho plays Sang-hyun, a Catholic priest doomed to be a creature of the night by a medical experiment gone wrong. Kim Ok-bin is Tae-ju, wife to one of the priest's childhood friends and soon to be his mistress. He can't resist her wiles or the fragrant pull of her menstrual blood. A torrid affair leads them down a path to murder, with the adulterous woman overcome with sexual hunger, vampiric lust, the scope of her newfound powers. Theirs is a toxic love that galvanizes both individuals' worst tendencies. Tae-ju is particularly afflicted, coming into her monstrous self by embracing the animal inside. As the plot unfolds, violent transgressions accumulate, and even a killer's conscience starts to weigh heavy. It escalates to a fiery conclusion, tragic opera dressed as Grand Guignol.
Unafraid of stylization, Park Chan-wook orients Thirst's form around these two wild souls, pitching its visuals to the same heightened register of the cast. However, no matter how saturated the cinematography can become, how baroque the camera movements grow, or the mad excess of production design, no flourish can outdo what Kim Ok-bin's up to as this neo-Thérèse Raquin. In a fearless tour-de-force, the actress surrenders to primordial forces – desires of annihilation and ferocious beastliness. She allows herself to go beyond mankind. In a story full of carnage, her mere presence is the scariest thing on-screen, a hellish vision of humanity overcome.
You can find Thirst, available to rent, on most platforms.
EXISTENZ (1999)
Before surgery was the new sex, David Cronenberg pondered a future where body and mind split through technologically-enhanced derealization. Everything is a game in the world of eXistenZ – a Cronenbergian mindfuck if there ever was one – and there's no price too large for escapism. That's the business of Allegra Geller, a game designer whose creations can be played through a placenta-like joystick directly connected to one's spine. We meet her on a turbulent night when a focus group session becomes the set for an assassination attempt. On the run for her life, she depends on the help of Ted Pikul, a marketing trainee turned bodyguard.
Throughout it all, she tries to persuade him into joining her in virtual reality, so concerned is she with the safety of her game, the fleshy console's health. Indeed, even as Ted panics over not being able to differentiate between what's true and what's not, Allegra's focus never wavers. In some ways, she prizes the titular eXistenZ above her own life. Though the plot takes the viewer on a rollercoaster full of twists and turns, no development feels truly outlandish as the parameters of actuality have been so thoroughly thrown off their axis. In some ways, there comes a point when the script almost starts making fun of itself.
And yet, eXistenZ contains one of Cronenberg's most serious statements of purpose as a filmmaker. He pits heroes cum villains in a conflict between Realists and those who threaten to deform reality, materializing a discourse on artistic intent as B-movie warfare. Realism becomes the repudiation of transcendence, and, no matter how ignoble it all might look, Cronenberg's camera prizes the fantastic above the mundane. Even if one is doomed to only experience nightmares, it's better to dream such horrors than not dream at all.
Over the years, many critics have lambasted the film for many valid reasons, from its fundamental misunderstanding of gaming logic and VR technology to its thematic bluntness. However, there's value in eXistenZ and its fascinating considerations. If nothing else, the movie contains one of Jennifer Jason Leigh's weirdest turns, a miraculous meeting of performer and role that manages to solve all the lunatic concepts the script throws at her. Production designer Carol Spier is another miracle worker. While delineating the plot's many levels of consciousness, she combines banality and gross-out fantasy to orgasmic effect. Even for a Cronenberg fan, some of these creations can be vomit-inducing.
Streaming-wise, eXistenZ is available on Pluto TV. You can also rent it on several services.
Reader Comments (4)
While I currently think THE HANDMAIDEN is Park Chan-wook's best film, I *love* THIRST so i'm happy to see it covered here again. It's strange that OLD BOY is a consensus because i think it's wildly inferior to those two. Is it because it's so 'macho' for lack of a better word?
2 incredible films that I highly recommend as it shows 2 filmmakers at their best.
Nathaniel — Thirst and The Handmaiden are my favorites as well, and honestly Oldboy isn’t even my favorite of the Vengeance Trilogy (that would be Lady Vengeance). The consensus around Oldboy has to be at least in part due to Tarantino hyping it up around the time of its release (he’s stated it was his first choice for the Palme d’Or when he was president of the Cannes jury in 2004), but yes, its “macho” tendencies certainly don’t hurt its American popularity either; it’s a highly stylized brooding revenge film based on a manga, so of course that’s much more accessible to a certain demographic of American audiences than the rest of Park’s filmography.
Cronenberg is my favorite director (or at least tied with 4 or 5 others), and while eXistenZ is far from being one or my favorites of his, it’s still quite fascinating for the reasons described here. Another excellent write-up!
Glad to know I'm not the only OLDBOY agnostic around here. Indeed, it's my least favorite out of the six Park Chan-wook features I've seen.