After Kristen Stewart reached a career high just months ago with her role as Princess Diana in the Oscar-nominated Spencer, the actress is continuing to make interesting career choices, now with David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. The movie, which recently premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival to buzz of festival-goers walking out during grotesque scenes, features an especially memorable scene of Stewart and Lord of the Rings’ Viggo Mortensen, with which she apparently surprised the director.
When CinemaBlend spoke to David Cronenberg, the legendary filmmaker, known for ‘80s science fiction horror movies like The Fly and Videodrome, shared what it was like to work with Kristen Stewart. In his words:
Kristen really, she did surprise me, because she created a character with the dialogue that I wrote and the description of the character that I wrote, but nonetheless, the actors have to bring this to life and that's a major, major act of creativity. She just immediately understood with the way she spoke, the level of her voice, the quickness of her dialogue. I had described this character as a sort of timid, bureaucratic mouse and she started with that, but of course the character reveals herself to be quite obsessive, Machiavellian, ambitious and quite devious actually. So there's an evolution, and that mouse-like bureaucratic thing becomes kind of a disguise for someone who's actually much more potent. So she delivered all of that stuff immediately. You know, I didn't have to do much directing. I have to tell you. And, that long scene with Viggo in her office, was just, it surprised everybody. I think it surprised her and Viggo too, but it was just beautiful. It was like, first take. That was it. It was fantastic.
In Crimes of the Future, Kristen Stewart is among a star-studded cast also including Léa Seydoux of the recent Bond films. Stewart plays a character unlike we’ve seen the actress take on named Timlin, who becomes fascinated with Viggo Mortensen’s Saul and seduces him later in the film. It’s a long sequence you wouldn’t imagine Mortensen and Stewart would nail right away. Cast member Scott Speedman co-signed on their work on the scene too. As he told CinemaBlend:
That was my first day. And I was early, and I was watching them do that scene. And I had no idea because on the page, you know, their vocal intonations and all that, wasn't there necessarily. And watching them, I was like, wow, I better step up here. Cause they're really going for it. And delivering A+ performances, it was wild. It was wild.
Kristen Stewart got the chance to work with David Cronenberg after her Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson introduced him to her after he was cast in his 2012 film Cosmopolis. As Cronenberg also said, Stewart really brought his character to life through her performance in a way he wasn’t necessarily expecting:
I mean, I put as much as I can into writing the dialogue, but it's still inert until it's spoken and that there's so much room for creativity there.
Crimes of the Future is set in a future where pain is the new pleasure and “sex is the new surgery.” Mortensen and Seydoux’s Saul and Caprice duo performance artist team delight audiences with their surgeries that serves as a new form of entertainment during the time. However, when they are presented with a new act, they must decide if they are willing to cross a new line for their art.
After debuting at Cannes to a six-minute standing ovation, the movie debuted to limited theaters over the weekend and will go nationwide this weekend. The movie was overall praised by critics, including CinemaBlend’s 3.5 out of 5 review of Crimes of the Future. Audiences, on the other hand, are so far mixed on whether it was worth their time. Keep up with more upcoming 2022 movies coming this summer here on CinemaBlend.
