C R A S H -- a movie review by Justin K. Siegel
Cars are sexy. They have been sexy since they have been cars. People have sex in cars all the time. At your average drive-in movie, the ratio of people having intercourse in their cars to people actually watching the movie is about 12-1 (I should know -- I did an essay on this in Gr. 7.)
Crashing cars, however, are not generally considered to be sexy. But to the select group of perverts and sycophants who populate the world of David Cronenberg's new film, CRASH, they are. Their leader is man named Vaughan (Elias Koteas), who makes his living by recreating famous car-crashes (Jayne Mansfield, James Dean). One of his "followers" is Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), whose husband has just been killed by James Ballard (James Spader), in a gruesome car-crash. Helen is surprisingly indifferent about her husband's passing, and she recruits Ballard and his beautiful wife Catherine (Debarah Karah Unger) into Vaughan's little psycho-sexual orginization.
Rosanna Arquette plays Gabrielle, a crash victim still in leg braces, whose vaginal leg-scars become the epitome of sexual excitement for James. The scene in which he administers oral sex to the scars is one of the most repulsive in recent memory. More repulsive than the boy/boy kiss between Spader and Koteas, which sent one of my friends fleeing the room.
I've never seen a movie with this many sex-scenes that was less sexually exciting (even SHOWGIRLS). CRASH seemed like it was just one interesting-to-watch, ten-minute sex-scene after another, but it was shot in a fashion that did its best not to be, um, _uplifting_.
If you are an intelligent human being looking for 100 intriguing, disturbing minutes, I would highly reccomend CRASH. On the other hand, if you are a horny teenager hoping to worship Onan while viewing, I suggest you look elsewhere.
B+ (report card) 8 (0 to 10) *** 1/2 (0 to ****)
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