Crash is a provocative and brilliantly disturbing project," announces Robert Lantos, chairman and CEO of Alliance Communications and the film's executive producer. "In the hands of David Cronenberg and with this extraordinary cast (James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Rosanna Arquette and Deborah Unger), it's safe to say that Crash will be unlike anything anyone has ever seen on film."
When Crash screens tonight - having been kept carefully under wraps by Alliance, without even a press screening prior to the festival for the Canadian market - it is likely to send a jolt through Palais paladins. The most eagerly awaited title of the year, Crash may provide the adrenaline rush that Francis Coppola's
jury have been looking for after nine solid days of watching films; for Cronenberg's in Competition entry is a powerful study of eroticism coupled with technology that explores the sexual passion provoked by traumatic car accidents.
Written by the eminent science-fiction author J.G. Ballard in 1973, the novel Crash explores the sexuality with which the 20th century has embraced the motor car. Canadian shockmeister Cronenberg, whose credits include Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Nightbreed, Naked Lunch and M. Butterfly, first read the novel in 1985, and five years later started on the screenplay. The project was officially announced by Lantos and Jeremy Thomas of The Recorded Picture Company at last year's festival, and 12 months later they are back in Competition with a cast that includes Hunter and Spader, no strangers to Cannes or acting in Palme d'Or-winning films.
The response to Crash was enthusiastic and immediate, with Mark Damon's MDP Worldwide rapidly closing deals in more than 40 territories. Fine Line Features picked it up in the States and have pencilled the film in for a late summer opening, probably on 23 August.
"Ballard is anticipating the psychology of the 21st century and pushing it back into this century," says Cronenberg about the novel. "He sees the strange way people respond to each other, what has happened to their sense of the erotic, love and interconnection. Crash is an extrapolation of the future and things happening in Western society right now."
In the film, advertising executive James Ballard (Spader) and his wife Catherine (Unger) lead complex, if hollow, sex lives. Following a near-fatal car crash with Dr Helen Remington (Hunter), Ballard explores the connections between danger, sex and death. As their involvement with scientist/photographer Vaughan (Koteas) and accident victim Gabrielle (Arquette) deepens, James and Catherine discover new and disturbing ways of expressing love.
"Crash is a futuristic love story set in the present," elaborates Cronenberg. "It deals with the attempt of two people, who have found themselves very disconnected and yet somehow in love, to reconnect through the medium of car crashes, and with other people who have experienced car crashes and felt the same kind of connection [with] each other. The car crashes are a metaphor for the collision of present technology and the human psyche.
"It's a dangerous film in many ways," admits Cronenberg. "Everyone involved in the film is both afraid and excited by the challenge of exploring society's fascination and our own personal fascination with technology and sexuality. The sexuality, odd as it is, is all consensual.
"The characters are actively trying to create a new form of sensuality, sexuality and eroticism. It is not forced on them, but is something they are developing from within. They've all experienced car crashes which have somehow unleashed a kind of erotic imagery that surprises them. They try, each in their own way, to incorporate that into their lives," concludes the maestro.
By the way, does anybody need a lift home after the screening? Christopher Pickard
Prod Co: Alliance Communications
Prod/Dir/Scr: David Cronenberg
Ph: Peter Suschitzky
Prod des: Carol Spier
Music: Howard Shore
Editor: Ronald Sanders
Cast: James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Rosanna Arquette, Deborah Unger.
Running time: 103mins
International sales: MDP Worldwide
