I totally freaked out when I saw this just released teaser trailer for Canadian director David Cronenberg‘s new film Cosmopolis (based on a 2003 novel by Don DeLillo). I am a huge fan of Cronenberg, except for 1996’s Crash, it’s the only film to this day I simply cannot see, I only watched a few minutes and immediately had to turn it off, car crashes mixed with sex gave me a panic attack! This film starring cutie Robert Pattinson (along with Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton and Juliette Binoche) definitely looks beyond twisted and bizarre, like most of Cronenberg’s films! It will be making its debut at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in May, and hopefully will open in theaters here in the next few months!
New York City, not-too-distant-future: Eric Packer, a 28 year-old finance golden boy dreaming of living in a civilization ahead of this one, watches a dark shadow cast over the firmament of the Wall Street galaxy, of which he is the uncontested king. As he is chauffeured across midtown Manhattan to get a haircut at his father’s old barber, his anxious eyes are glued to the yuan’s exchange rate: it is mounting against all expectations, destroying Eric’s bet against it. Eric Packer is losing his empire with every tick of the clock. Meanwhile, an eruption of wild activity unfolds in the city’s streets. Petrified as the threats of the real world infringe upon his cloud of virtual convictions, his paranoia intensifies during the course of his 24-hour cross-town odyssey.
Packer starts to piece together clues that lead him to a most terrifying secret: his imminent assassination. Cronenberg revisits subjects that fascinate him: how the organic and the psychological are inextricably intertwined, society’s anxieties and phobias, and letting repressed impulses and paranoia run wild. Cosmopolis is a culmination of his masterpieces that addresses the alarming global financial crisis of today’s world.
It is a hauntingly prophetic fable that turns the future into history and suggests that the archaic might be our eerie future.
