The general reputation of David Cronenberg films—whether it’s that they’re icky and gross, or that they’re cold and clinical—ignores the fact that they are often very romantic. Or at least, they are often about love, relationships, and compatibility in a more complex and sensitive way than a lot of the psychological dramas or body horror films made in the mold of the Canadian maestro. It makes sense: questions like, “does my body experience the world the same way as yours?” and “how does desire change our bodies and the way we see each other?” are deeply ingrained not just in the Cronenbergian project, but also our own personal, romantic journeys.
Cronenberg’s latest, The Shrouds, is a funny and moving exploration of modern grief through the lens of technology and conspiracy, inspired by the loss of Cronenberg’s wife, Carolyn Zeifman, in 2017. To honor the rich history of romantic relationships in Cronenberg’s films, we have compiled a list of 10 of his movies that you could substitute for couples therapy. Please note: many of these fictional couples are not healthy or aspirational examples, and should not be replicated in your personal life!
The Brood (1979)
One of the most toxic marriages in a Cronenberg film is in The Brood, also known as the last time Cronenberg made a film about his marriage. Made deep in the director’s “Canadian tax shelter era”, The Brood was Cronenberg’s first great film—an uncomfortable domestic horror about a fractured marriage and the psychiatrist (Oliver Reed) who is bringing out a murderous nest of psychic spawn in the troubled wife. As the violence ascends to irreparable levels, Cronenberg lets the film’s final moments of a father and daughter driving away from the horror of the mother’s fate wash over the audience. Perhaps there was a way to heal this marital strife, but only the most extreme, desperate measures were pursued.
The Fly (1986)
Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis as a couple would make for an exquisitely steamy movie; unfortunately, Goldblum is turned into a gooey, mutated fly monster for most of The Fly, so the final product is only pretty steamy. Seth Brundle (Goldblum) is a scientist trying to impress journalist Ronnie Quaife (Davis) when he takes her back to his gloomy, gothic apartment where his teleportation pods are waiting for willing human test subjects. After accidentally splicing his DNA with a common house fly, Seth pursues Ronnie with extra vigor and desire, only for his narcissistic tendencies to panic when his body starts transforming and undermining his newfound virility. Even though Seth treats Ronnie with an appalling lack of compassion throughout, The Fly ends on one of the most melancholic, tragic notes of Cronenberg’s career—Seth asking Ronnie to put him out of his misery via shotgun blast.
Dead Ringers (1988)
Two identical twin gynecologists, Beverly and Elliott (both played by Jeremy Irons), pursue the same woman: Claire (Geneviève Bujold), an actress who, like many of the seduced women attending the brothers’ clinic, does not know that her lover has passed her to his brother. With all its toxic love triangles and prescription drug abuse, Dead Ringers is a film about dependency, and watching the characters, by turns strong willed and meek, try to extract themselves from one another or cure the poison that’s always coursing through their romantic and sexual imbalance, leaving each with the choice to be amputated or absorbed.
Naked Lunch (1991)
Cronenberg’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ most famous novel Naked Lunch opens and closes with Bill Lee (Peter Weller) shooting his wife Joan and her doppelganger (both Judy Davis), a major, troubling event from Burroughs’ life that informed much of his writing. In Naked Lunch, both of Joan’s deaths trigger important threshold crossings for her husband. He escapes to “Interzone” in North Africa after killing her in America, and at the end, must reenact his wife’s death with her doppelganger in order to cross the border to “Annexia”, where he can live freely as a writer. This is a marriage (and, by extension, a deep guilt) that reverberates through Bill’s journey, confronting him at the film’s close to clarify how defining this violence was for his art.
M. Butterfly (1993)
A pained and political work, M. Butterfly adapts the play of the same name to tell the story of a French diplomat in Beijing who had an affair for 20 years with a Chinese opera performer without realizing that his lover was a spy or a man. It’s a film of fraught borders: Song Liling (John Lone) can only express their queerness through serving their nation’s political interests, while the fading power of France’s empire has a debilitating effect on René (a perfectly cast Jeremy Irons) as he chases a love that’s built on a queasy, undefined blend of truth and lies. Love that’s compromised and unsustainable makes for a strange but aptly Cronenbergian period drama.
Crash (1996)
An ill-fitting union sits at the center of Cronenberg’s techno-erotic drama Crash, which adapts J.G. Ballard’s vision of a tight-knit cell of fetishists who are turned on by car crashes. James (James Spader) and Catherine (Deborah Unger) each pursue taboo, non-monogamous pleasures in an ongoing collaborative effort to spice up modern, married ennui. But the borderless, dangerous movement led by Vaughan (Elias Koteas) is the only significantly exciting sexual challenge they encounter, leading them down a dark road that culminates in one of the most romantic final shots of Cronenberg’s career.
A History of Violence (2005)
What if your pleasant small-town marriage was built on a lie? In a move towards more commercial waters, Cronenberg made an identity thriller that appealed to a wide audience but sacrificed little of his psychological fascinations. Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, a loving father and husband who upends his family’s life when he performs a heroic act of violence in his town, and revelations about his former life come to light. Maria Bello stuns as Edie, his wife, who channels both devotion and revulsion as her romantic and sexual relationship with the rock in her life is polluted by the gradual revelation of his real identity, despite Tom maintaining that he has truly changed, and that this loving, calm family man is meaningfully real.
A Dangerous Method (2011)
Keira Knightley gives one of the best performances of her career as Sabina Spielrein, a key patient for Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and later, one of the first female psychoanalysts. Her relationship, first as patient, then as lover, with Jung is the backbone of Cronenberg’s drama, as the abuse Sabrina suffered from her father leads to unorthodox treatment for her masochistic fantasies. It’s the perfect subject matter for Cronenberg in a more demure mode of filmmaking—visceral and sexual, but in a curious, intellectual mindset—and as it turns out, the perfect subject matter for exploring a Cronenbergian romance.
Crimes of the Future (2022)
It’s the future, and surgery is the new sex. Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) is a performance artist whose partner, Caprice (Léa Seydoux), assists in his shows, which involve new organs being removed from his body. She is the inquisitive surgeon, he is the willing, trusting patient. Crimes of the Future is a film teeming with desire and possibility—every character is flirting with the other, and the devotion shown by Saul and Caprice feels crucial to their individual journeys of personal and physical discovery through the dystopian film. Ultimately, Saul and Caprice are drawn down different avenues of transformation, but apart from giving us one of the hottest couples in a Cronenberg film, Crimes of the Future is such a compelling and thoughtful work because of how it imagines the flexibility and strangeness of love in a dismal future.
The Shrouds (2024)
The Shrouds is not the first Cronenberg film drawn from his own marriage, nor is it the first where the plot heavily features a dead wife. But it is the director’s funniest and most affecting film in a while. Karth (Vincent Cassel) has turned his grief into a veritable business where mourners can look at digital representations of their buried loved ones at any time they wish—but an act of vandalism at his private cemetery starts to unravel the feigned normalcy of modernity to reveal conspiracy, loneliness, and keen emotional wounds. The Shrouds already feels like a key text in how the current moment has atomized and isolated us from the community and closeness that helps us grieve.
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