Naked Lunch (1991)

(Youtube Streaming, December 2020) I won’t even try to explain the plot of Naked Lunch: it’s bizarre enough that it probably wouldn’t make sense anyway. But this reinterpretation of William S. Burroughs’ novel is one that relies more on scenes and visuals than overall plot for impact. What we do have here is an exterminator possibly driven to hallucinations through the bug powder dust he inhales. Or perhaps he’s a secret agent taking orders from insect-like creatures. Or maybe he’s a writer in North Africa, living in a science-fiction Interzone in-between aliens and secret operatives. Maybe he’s bisexual, or maybe insectsexual. Maybe he’s being directed by a harsh dark-haired woman, or maybe she’s just a man in elaborate disguise. Maybe he meets his dead wife’s doppelganger (albeit with a better and curlier haircut), or maybe she’s the same person. Maybe… yeah, maybe. A good cast (Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Roy Scheider and, wait, is that Monique Mercure?) anchors the film in dubiously tactile reality, but don’t take anything for granted. After all, this is a film in which the protagonist’s typewriter gets an erection during a sex scene and if that doesn’t get you interested, then you were never meant to see it anyway. Under David Cronenberg’s typical direction, Naked Lunch is wonderfully weird even thirty years later – delightfully close to Science Fiction while also being recognizable as a psychological thriller if you choose to be a stick in the mud about the film’s genre affiliations. I’m glad I tried to watch the film and bounced off of it in the late 1990s – I had a much better time revisiting it now that my expectations were lowered and calibrated for maximum eccentricity. But I will admit that it’s not to everyone’s taste. Incidentally, the film inspired its perfect soundtrack three years later: Bomb the Bass’s Bug Powder Dust.