eXistenZ is a Film Franco-Canadian Fantastique carried out by David Cronenberg, left in 1999.

Synopsis

In a near future, the players of video games are connected to a world Virtuel thanks to a console called pod which resembles a mass of living tissue and is connected to the Nervous system of the player through a bioport , a hole resembling a Anus bored at the base of the back of the player. The demonstration of the very last play Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) turns to the Cauchemar by the intervention of a commando of fanatics opposed to the “mechanization” of the man; it is not a question any more of living an adventure, but of surviving it…

Screen of film is based on confusion between Reality and Virtual reality, that the characters live out and in the video game called eXistenZ , of which the goal is quite simply to live an adventure (with the manner of a Jeu of adventure), in a ultra-realistic world.

Comment

In this film, Cronenberg has fun to give a biological texture to the technological objects: the game consoles are kinds of Fœtus, connections are ensured by umbilical cords plugging in Sphincter S… He also plays with the codes of the video games: stereotyped characters and actions , actions which buckle until the player makes the “good deed” to free them…

The film is diverting with the direction where the spectator himself loses himself in the Mise in abyme of the virtual world.

It is an interesting and critical vision Cyberpunk.

Data sheet

• Title: eXistenZ

• Realization: David Cronenberg
• Scenario: David Cronenberg
• Production: David Cronenberg, Andras Hamori, Robert Lantos, Bradley Adams, Damon Bryant and Michael MacDonald
• Budget: 31 million dollars CAD (20,3 million euros)
• Music: Howard Shore
• Photography: Peter Suschitzky
• Assembly: Ronald Sanders
• Decorations: Carol Spier
• Country of origin: Canada, the United Kingdom, France
• Format: Colors - 1,85:1 - Dolby DIGITAL - 35 mm
• Kind: Fantastic
• Lasted: 96 minutes
• Comings out date: February 16th, 1999 with the cinema (festival of Berlin), April 14th, 1999 with the cinema (France), April 23rd, 1999 with the cinema (Canada, the United States), May 19th, 1999 with the cinema (Belgium)
• Film prohibited with less than 12 years at the time of its exit in France

Distribution

• Jennifer Jason Leigh: Allegra To freeze, the creative one of the play

• Jude Law: Ted Pikul
• Ian Holm : Kiri Vinokur, mentor To freeze
• Willem Dafoe: Gas, installor of bioports
• Gift McKellar: Yevgeny Nourish
• Callum Keith Disavows: Hugo Carlaw
• Christopher Eccleston: Levi
• Sarah Polley: Blackbird

Around film

• It should be noted that eXistenZ is, with Videodrome , the only film whose Cronenberg wrote the Scénario. These two films have other common points: confusion between reality and virtuality, fusion of the organics and the technological one.

• There exists a Novélisation of this film, written by the author of science fiction Christopher Priest, specialist in parallel realities.

External bonds

• '' eXistenZ '' on Internet Critical Movie Database

• of eXistenZ