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Spider (VOSTF)
Location
Main screening room
Date
February 19th, 2022
Admission
13 +
Duration
98 min
Cycle
Cronenberg: Through a Distorting Mirror

David Cronenberg has created a multidimensional universe in which he insistently questions the limits of every facet of the human condition – physical, moral and existential. This program extends from his early days in Montreal, where he made exploitation flicks produced by Cinépix (Rabid, Shivers), to Maps to the Stars, a scathing take on the California jet-set lifestyle. A creepy parallel universe emerges through films like The Fly, which catapulted him to mainstream success, and eXistenZ, in which it seems perfectly normal to plug an organic game console into one’s spine. This is inside-out cinema, in which unique beings constantly show us funhouse-mirror reflections of our world. This program includes all of Cronenberg’s features, most of them in 35 mm.

Spider
Directed by
David Cronenberg
Language
English with French subtitles
Actors
Gabriel Byrne, Miranda Richardson, Ralph Fiennes
Origins
Canada, UK
Year
2002
Duration
98 min
Genre
Drame, thriller
Rating
13 +
Format
35 mm
Synopsis

Spider, a young man diagnosed with schizophrenia, was in a psychiatric hospital for several years. One day, he is transferred to a halfway house in the east end of London. It's in these neighborhoods that Spider experienced during his childhood the drama that turned his life upside down. As a child, in his delirium, he was convinced his father had killed his mother to replace her with a prostitute. Pondered in his memories, he decides to investigate...

Spider
Awards

David Cronenberg

David Paul Cronenberg is a Canadian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror genre, with his films exploring visceral bodily transformation, infection, technology, and the intertwining of the psychological with the physical. In the first third of his career he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction films such as Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983), although his work has since expanded beyond these genres. Cronenberg's films have polarized critics and audiences alike; he has earned critical acclaim and has sparked controversy for his depictions of gore and violence. The Village Voice called him "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world". His films have won numerous awards, including, for Crash, the Special Jury Prize at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, a unique award that is distinct from the Jury Prize as it is not given annually, but only at the request of the official jury, who in this case gave the award "for originality, for daring, and for audacity".

Explore

A summit meeting, in the words of the Canadian filmmaker, "between Beckett and Freud", Spider superimposes several canvases in which the viewer's gaze is caught. First of all, the story, a transposition of an eponymous novel by Patrick McGrath, an author obsessed with psychiatric deviances, who himself sent the script to Cronenberg considering that the director was the only one able to take it on.
Le temps (2002)
About Spider
Full cast
About David Cronenberg
Filmography | director
Filmography | actor
Studies
+4
Spider lends itself so well to a Freudian reading that it could almost serve as an introduction to the psychoanalysis of psychoses. Mechanisms of hallucination, "predisposing fixation" of the schizophrenic to a childhood memory, "non-assimilation of castration", "regression of the libido to a narcissistic stage"... In Spider, the genesis of schizophrenia is approached with a clinical precision that is matched only by the very presence of Spider, a typical schizophrenic, with his language problems, his extreme withdrawal, his "visions", even if this clinical exactitude sometimes pays the price of an overly strong demonstration.
Jean-Philippe Gravel
Ciné-Bulles
Open