History Naomi Nathan Seberg and Math are photojournalists. Lovers, both globetrotters travel the world and find themselves between flights in airport hotels according to their reports. They share the same passion for new technologies, they experience in the course of their work, with a hint of competition between them. Nathan has specialized in medical reports. Naomi research sensational topics. The Arosteguy case arises. It is enticing: the mutilated body of Celestine Arosteguy was found in the Paris apartment of a couple of philosophers, professors at the Sorbonne, known for their left-leaning political positions and their libertinism (Sartre and Beauvoir in multimedia version). Aristide, the husband has disappeared. Police suspect he killed not only his wife but also to have dismembered and partially eaten.
While Naomi begins his investigation in Paris with the help of a student hit by Peyronie’s disease Nathan is in Hungary to photograph an operation by a surgeon suspected of organ trafficking. Paris, Tokyo, Budapest, Canada … Started in parallel, the two surveys will gradually walk towards each other to converge towards North Korea, amid dark history of explosive hearing aids, while two lovers them immersed in their subjects (literally and figuratively), gradually moving away from each other …
Encyclopedia of morbidity
cannibalism , altered body, illness, mutilation, old age, phobias (breast invaded by insects), or the theme sexuality (swingers, fetishism …). The novel by David Cronenberg is a catalog of morbidity. The director develops his obsessions in a plot rather well done. Suspense, twists, twists program
And the director takes his subject as he films: surgically scientist lighting. Whether the description of sex deflected by Peyronie’s disease a Parisian student met Naomi, extravagant or operation of a Hungarian surgeon on the breasts of one of his patients suffering from cancer, or devouring cannibalo-sexual scene of Celestine, or manic performance of a young American woman nibbling pieces of his body cut with nail clippers, or technological toys of each other (appliances camera, printer three D, cameras …), David Cronenberg novelist does not skimp on resources. It connects the tables, horror staged as performance art
Sensuality new technologies
It can be said in passing that he knows a lot about new technologies. Objects but also landscapes, which he describes as such (optical cameras, memory cards, flash units SU-800 wireless or another nagra SD, screens). For one who is interested in the subject, he will find in “Consumed” an encyclopedia .. Better, a new sensory pallet (their evocation causes the disorder or excitement among its characters). It does not necessarily share this exaltation, and the wealth of detail, fun at first (a style) ends up wearying over time, much as can be boring descriptions of landscapes or military scenes in the novels of the nineteenth century.
But the novel Cronenberg is well built (except the end, a little fishtail), ultra-documented, served by a rich and precise vocabulary, “body dysmorphic disorder”, “apotemnophilia”, “acrotomophilia”, these three there in one page (92) and offers beautiful songs about love, especially on the psychological mechanisms and springs that make two lovers still love despite advanced age, disease and alteration of the body that accompany them. Cronenberg explores the margins, folds, darkness, a complex human material he observes the scene of a contemporary society thrown in a virtual reality as exciting as disturbing …
Why David Cronenberg has happened to writing?
Cronenberg succeeds rather well its passage to writing. “Consumed” is a contemporary thriller that extends by the words his cinematic work, complete, enlightens. It is interesting to witness the implementation of its cinema, a certain aesthetic of horror, literature, though the novel is sometimes indigestible strand (we do not know if it’s because he’s a little long, or if it is the accumulation of horrors that eventually causes the over-dose).
“I always thought writing a novel” (his father was a writer), explained the director, who says , interviewed by William Erner on France Culture, have been “kidnapped by the cinema.” The director also says he started writing ‘Consumed “like the script of a film, before embarking on other routes.” The novel is a space of incomparable freedom, “said David Cronenberg in interview with the newspaper Le Temps, “a much more intimate and discursive form that cinema (…). In writing, you can place a day by connecting to international events, personal memories, to subtle references. It is impossible on the screen, “the director said he also appreciated the freedom that allows writing in relation to the cinema.” Literature, and that’s what attracts me is also very independent. If you ask someone to invest $ 10 million in a movie, you are immediately chained to a lot of constraints. Writing a novel no restrictions. “
From movie to the novel and the novel the film
Canadian director has still taken the camera to direct a short film” Nest “, published on the website of the Canadian publisher Hamish Hamilton Canada before the publication of the novel. it shows a woman, topless, talk to the doctor who has to practice her mastectomy rendered necessary to eliminate insects that colonized her left breast . We understand better the video once you read the book.
Extract (English) from the short film “the nest” (Some images may offend)
the novel could in turn become a film producer interested. But if it is customary because -he several novels adapted to the screen ( “naked Lunch” by William Burroughs, “Crash “JG Ballard or” Cosmopolis “by Don DeLillo) – David Cronenberg has already announced it will not charge to adapt his novel for the screen.” to make a film must betray the novel, “he said and “there is no real translation, that must be a reinvention and betray myself would be very strange self-destructive. I leave the work to someone else to betray me, “he said. It would already writing a second novel.
Consumed David Cronenberg, translated from the English (Canada) by Clelia Laventure
(Gallimard – 372 pages – 21 euros)
Extract
Naomi was in the screen. Or, more accurately, she was in the apartment in the QuickTime window in the screen, the small shabby apartment academics and Celestine Aristide Arosteguy. she was sitting in front of them, installed side by side on a old sofa – was was it burgundy corduroy -?.., who were talking with an interviewer off-camera And with its white plastic ear cups, she was also acoustically, among Arosteguy it felt the room depth and three-dimensionality of their heads, sagacious heads sensual face, two people matching such a brother and sister. She could smell the books crammed into the library behind them, felt the intense heat intellectual who emanated. In part, everything was clear – an effect of the video, its small CCD or CMOS sensors; the nature of the medium, thought Naomi – and this depth of feeling in the room, in books, in the faces was intensified by “
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