T
HE TERM “CRONENBERGIAN” HAS COME TO EMBODY A CINE- MATIC OBSESSION WITH DEVIANT SEXUALITY, MAD SCIENCE AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE FLESH – OFTEN THROUGH TECHNOL-
OGY, DISEASE OR A COMBINATION OF BOTH. Diseases mutate, of course, so it’s wholly appropriate that the meaning of the term itself should change as it’s passed along. Brandon Cronenberg, the 32-year-old offspring of the “King of Venereal Horror,” David Cronenberg, has proven that to be true with his debut feature Antiviral, which takes many of his father’s themes and develops them to suit a modern landscape. Taking only a few small leaps ahead from the current climate of celebrity obsession
that has led to aggressive tabloid reporting, online sex tapes and plastic surgery over- hauls designed to make the recipient resemble his or her favourite icon, the film posits a world where not only can you watch a channel dedicated to pictures of the stars’ most intimate physical minutiae and buy synthetic meat made from their cells at the local deli, you can visit a clinic and be infected with an exclusively licensed celebrity virus. What better way to bond with your idol than to share a disease? Want a strain of the Norwalk flu “picked up at a backstage party in Berlin?” A whooping
cough caught by a famous actress while attending a restaurant opening in New York City? How about a herpes simplex virus acquired during a “highly publicized affair?” All these and more are available at the oppressively sterile, over-lit Lucas Clinic, where, for a fee, you can get the same sores on the side of your mouth as someone in the spotlight. To further sell the world of the film (viral marketing, if you will...), the producers have even created a Facebook page and website for the clinic,
lucasclinic.com, which looks eerily authentic. (The site advertises, “The range of offerings spans common skin infec- tions and colds, to our more intense and lengthy experiences with communicable and rare forms of acute disease.”) Enter thin, pale, nearly emotionless Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones, p.19), who sells
and administers the custom sicknesses at the clinic. A company man by day, at night he breaks the copyright protection on the viruses and sells them on the black market – after dangerously smuggling them out of the clinic in his own body. When one of the hottest young stars, Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon), contracts a mysterious illness, Syd is sent to acquire it from her. He infects himself before learning that the ailment is fatal. With the clinic becoming increasingly suspicious, competitors and black market vendors desperate to get their hands on the strain by any means necessary, and the bloody symptoms of the disease starting to manifest, Syd frantically searches for a cure. The answer may lie with one Dr. Abendroth, played by Malcolm McDowell, who harbours his own secrets. The elder Cronenberg’s penchant for unusual character names has certainly carried
over to Brandon, along with a cold, calculating aesthetic, the colour-drained particulars of which were developed in conjunction with director of photography Karim Hussain (di- rector of La belle bête,Ascension and Subconscious Cruelty, and director of photography on Hobo with a Shotgun). Shot in the Toronto area during the late fall of 2011, Antiviral’s atmosphere is only enhanced by the uneasy and exceptionally affecting score by E.C. Woodley (The Dark Hours). But the seed of the movie was planted much earlier, by the filmmaker’s two previous
shorts. In 2008, he wrote and directed the eight-minute Broken Tulips (the title refers to the “tulip breaking virus,” which affects the flowers by causing colour patterns and vari- ations that are often highly sought-after), about a man obsessed with a Hollywood starlet to the point of having himself infected with a herpes-like virus to share a connection with her. Then, in 2010, he made the fourteen-minute-long The Camera and Christopher Merk, about a building where the tenants are under constant, reality show-style surveil- lance, and the protagonist soon starts to lose his identity. Brandon, who has worked on his father’s films before, notably in the effects department on 1999’s eXistenZ, seems poised to carry on the family business of cinematically disturbing, provoking and, yes, disgusting the masses. Antiviral has combined and focused the Cronenbergian themes into a story that
uses those familiar tropes to explore very timely, unsettling ideas about the commodification of our bodies, the potential of bio-technology to change them, and the hysteria of Celebrity Worship Syndrome (a.k.a. CWS, a term coined in 2003 to describe an obsessive-addictive disorder). The movie is absurd yet harrowingly close to reality. We met up with the younger Cronenberg in downtown
Toronto, at the office of producers Rhombus Media, for a face-to-face discussion about Antiviral, which makes its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this month, followed by a theatrical release from Alliance Films. This is the new New Flesh.
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