Before I begin the review I need to ask a question of each and everyone of you and to be honest it might be a little too personal for you to share or even admit. How many of you have made it through David Cronenberg’s 1996 film Crash, from start to finish, without pausing it at least once to engage in amorous activities? And I’m not just counting those of you who watched it with a partner. Let’s include glorious self-love as well. Obviously, well I hope it’s obvious, this doesn’t include any time you watched it in a theater or any other public gathering. For those of you who were lucky enough to watch it in a theater, we can probably assume you went home, driving carefully I hope, and reenacted any of the sultry scenes from the film. But seriously, as someone who never got to watch it in a theater, I would’ve loved to see just how many ticket purchasing patrons pulled out prematurely and which scene caused them to leave.
Now that we’ve got that question out of the way, and you’re either sitting there red faced and sheepish or with a sly, smug grin, let’s start talking about the film.
I have no problem believing that James Spader has starred in a movie such as this. After the teen fare from the mid 80’s he made himself a home video star with Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Sensing that he could fill a particular niche with his uneasy sex appeal he went on to other erotic thrillers such as Bad Influence, White Palace, and Stargate (C’mon, even around the androgynous god Ra, Spader could still get it). So as weird as he can make me feel, he felt right at home as James Ballard, the television director who, after a rather horrific automobile accident, begins to engage in even stranger sex than he was already practicing. I might be a bit of a prude, but it was weird watching him describe sex with other people to his girlfriend, played by Deborah Kara Unger, while having sex with her.
Had it just been Spader, it would’ve been easy to say this was a strange film with a strange cast, but then Cronenberg called on Atom Egoyan’s regular weirdo Elias Koteas to do his thing, and even with Exotica on his CV, this might have been his strangest, and most alluringly sexual performance.
Oh and then you can throw in Patricia Arquette in leather and leg braces, with scars running up the back of her leg that resembles a certain body part in only ways that David Cronenberg can do it. While he’s told stories of cars (Fast Company), dangerous sex (Rabid) and body horror (most of his early filmography) before, he’s never balanced it in such a way that works for all of his usual tics. It’s cold and distant in the way many of his films are, but it manages to invite you in as a voyeur as well. It can be thoroughly repulsive, and as I mentioned in the first paragraph, still manage to turn you on. Working from a novel by J.G. Ballard, it manages to adapt it so well in a unique way, much like he did with Naked Lunch. Crash is Cronenberg playing to all his strengths and doing it incredibly well.
It might not be a film for everyone, but for those who manage to make it to the end it definitely offers a cathartic release.
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
