Attempting to understand why they are so aroused by their car wreck, they go to witness one of Vaughan's cult meetings/performance pieces, during which he thoroughly re-creates the car crash that killed James Dean with authentic cars and stunt drivers.

While leaving the hospital, Helen and James begin an affair, one primarily fueled by their shared experience of the car crash. Robert Vaughan, who takes a keen interest in the brace holding James's shattered leg together and photographs it. While recovering, James meets Helen again, as well as a man named Dr. Helen Remington, the driver and the dead passenger's wife, exposes a breast to James when she pulls off the shoulder harness of her seat belt. While driving home from work late one night, James' car collides head-on with another, killing its male passenger. When James replies he did not achieve satisfaction during his sexual encounter with one of his coworkers, Catherine replies, 'maybe the next one'. She recounts sex that day with a stranger in a prop plane hangar. Their arousal is heightened by discussing the intimate details of their extramarital sex. The couple engage in various trysts but, between them, have unenthusiastic sex. It has since developed a cult following among Cronenberg fans.įilm producer James Ballard and his detached wife Catherine are in an open marriage.

The film's initial release was met with intense controversy and opened to highly divergent reactions from critics some praised the film for its daring premise and originality, others aimed criticism for having such a strange premise filled with graphic violence. It continued to receive various accolades, including six Genie Awards from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, including awards for Cronenberg as director and screenwriter the film was also nominated in two further categories, including Best Picture. When then-jury president Francis Ford Coppola announced the award 'for originality, for daring and for audacity', he stated that it had been a controversial choice and that certain jury members 'did abstain very passionately'. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Prize, 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 (for example, the previous year, both a Jury Prize and a Special Jury Prize were awarded). Starring James Spader, Deborah Kara Unger, Elias Koteas, Holly Hunter and Rosanna Arquette, it follows a film producer who, after surviving a car crash, becomes involved with a group of symphorophiliacs who are aroused by car crashes, and tries to rekindle his sexual relationship with his wife. Crash is a 1996 psychological drama film written, produced and directed by David Cronenberg, based on J.

Crash 1996 Uncut