In the summer of 1996, months prior to its Canadian theatrical release, I sat down one hot afternoon to skim a stolen copy of Crash's screenplay. The 77-page adaptation read like alien porno. Dirty, scientific, and pointless, it was less a study in human behaviour than documented evidence of David Cronenberg's mid-life crisis. (He adapted from J.G. Ballard's novel.) And when October 4^th came, I discovered that that script had been transmogrified into sounds and images faithful to its cold words.

James Spader is James Ballard (as the novel is quite masturbatory it makes sense that its author would name his protag after himself), a TV producer with a voracious sexual appetite. Both he and his wife, Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger), seek extramarital partners during the day and convene at night to exchange their tales of infidelity. One day James is in a terrible automobile wreck--the husband of Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter) is hurled through James' windshield. Weeks after the accident, James and Helen discover it was quite the aphrodisiac as the two meet at a car impound and are compelled to get their groove on.

Helen introduces James to Vaughan (Elias Koteas), a doctor obsessed with the connection between vehicle impact and orgasm. He welcomes James into a circus that includes such sideshow freaks as a woman with leg-braces she uses like S&M gear. Vaughan's subjects are spiritually linked by virtue of having survived crashes--and having enjoyed them.

Early on in the picture, Vaughan tells James that he's fascinated by the "reshaping of the human body by modern technology," only to later chalk this up to his ruse. What really turns Vaughan's crank, apparently, is the psychopathology behind surviving a car accident. If we're to read between the lines, we can't help but draw comparisons to Cronenberg's career: after a decade (the eighties) of movies about, well, the "reshaping of the human body by modern technology" (consider The Fly's BrundleFly; The Dead Zone's car crash victim made psychic; Dead Ringers' menu of gynecological instruments for fixing "mutant" women), he suddenly finds himself on fuzzy ground. What exactly are Naked Lunch or M. Butterfly, his two films to precede Crash, about, anyway? To oversimplify, Crash is the portrait of a confused artist--Cronenberg a dirty old man with a head full of soft-focused ideas and with an ever-declining interest in the emotional effects of scientific manipulation. (Dead Ringers, for all its icky themes, is a deeply moving film.)

Worse, much of Crash suggests an unhinged Calvin Klein commercial. One half-expects Unger, who reacts to all environmental stimuli with the same NyQuil-numb expression, to say "far out" during her backseat rape at a car wash, while Hunter seems to have little notion of the emotional course she's to chart and Koteas, occasionally, recalls Jim Carrey's Cable Guy. At least the three of them leave an impression, which is more than one can say for Spader.

Crash deserved its special Prix Audacité at Cannes '97, because it lives up to that award's single qualification: it's audacious. But that's all it is. Roger Ebert wrote "[Crash] is a strange and insightful film about human sexual compulsion (``Belle de Jour,'' ``Peeping Tom'' and ``Damage'' are others). By deliberately removing anything that an audience member is likely to find even remotely erotic, Cronenberg has brought a kind of icy, abstract purity to his subject." I'd like to add that by removing anything an audience member is likely to find even remotely erotic, Cronenberg has defeated the very thing that separates Crash from the rest of schlock: literal auto-eroticism. The film does not attempt to actually turn the audience on to such an absurd fetish as vehicular manslaughter, instead merely poking at the subject matter with a scalpel. Only a Canadian could render such extremes of naughtiness boring. (See also Lynne Stopkewich's botched tale of necrophilia, Kissed.)

Too bad Crash's DVD is so breathtaking: the disc's flawless image tempts one to watch the film again and again. Glance at chapters 15 or 20 to examine the astonishing level of clarity (you can count the water droplets on James' window during said car wash sequence). The 1.78:1 film has been given a spanking new 16x9-enhanced transfer for this latest video incarnation, with a dynamic, if not entirely full, Dolby Surround 4.0 mix to match. (It sounds, in fact, almost identical to the Dolby SR theatrical presentation.) Also included are cast and crew biographies and that rare trailer that looks as pristine as the movie itself.

I do agree with Ebert about Damage, however, the simple (though not simplistic) tale of British diplomat Stephen Fleming's affair with French Anna Barton (Juliette Binoche), an antiques appraiser. Stephen is played by Jeremy Irons, the Ron Jeremy of arthouse cinema; Stephen's infidelity affects two significant others in his life: his wife (Miranda Richardson) and son (Rupert Graves). (Anna's boyfriend.) Stephen is never dishonest with himself about the mistake he's making, but quirky sex (call it sadomasochism-lite) with his boy's porcelain doll of a girlfriend is an inescapable magnetic force. The title applies not only to the repercussions of the fling, but also to the rocky past that has left Anna damaged goods for the Fleming men.

Director Louis Malle and screenwriter David Hare quickly and brilliantly set up the would-be couple's first liaison. After having met very briefly at a party, Anna telephones Stephen at work. A conversation of three sentences transpires, and then he leaves his office to meet her. They exchange even fewer words when he arrives at her home--he lunges for her and their spindly bodies become entangled.

Damage understands that human beings often resort to primitive communication in matters of the libido; the filmmakers refuse to dwell on Anna's motivation at first, seeing her as a sexual being whilst avoiding the label of femme fatale. ("Remember," Anna whispers in Stephen's ear, "damaged people...know how to survive.") (As for Stephen's motivation: have you seen her?) Binoche's performance is exceptional: there's a wisdom behind her eyes that appears to have accepted the (arguably) human, if ultimately repressible, need to be polygamous. Their scenes together constitute a mature study of desire and impulse. During his long, expansive directorial career, Malle took lust as seriously as anyone has.

Unfortunately, Damage doesn't gel as a whole; part of the problem is that the supporting characters don't breathe. With the exception of Leslie Caron as Anna's dangerously observant mother, the rest of the cast must act ignorant of the situation and nothing more. Martyn wears a face of gullibility worthy of Gilligan throughout--it's no wonder Anna spares herself time with this insufferable bore in other people's beds. There's no tension in Martin's inobservant sainthood, nothing that brings real depth to his father and Anna's betrayal. Miranda Richardson has "the Beatrice Straight role" as the put-upon wife: she inexplicably comes to life in the closing moments of the film, delivering a teary monologue that won her an Oscar nomination. But it's too little, too late. Besides, is there a star alive who makes sex more shameful--or has a guiltier face post-coitus--than Jeremy Irons? The idea that his friends and family were not in the know continues to strike me as far-fetched after my third viewing of the film. Damage would work better if the forbidden relationship that drives its story didn't always feel like an elephant in the room.

Damage looks surprisingly stunning on DVD, thanks to New Line's high quality standards. Letterboxed at 1.66:1 (according to the liner notes) and enhanced for 16:9 televisions (since widescreen sets display an image of about 1.78:1, the image appears "windowboxed" in anamorphic mode), the film-like image is as gorgeous as Binoche. There is only slight, occasional shimmering (most noticeable when looking at the indentations on Stephen's bathtub), but this could in fact have more to do with my player's (Pioneer DVL-700) downcoversion capabilities than the actual compression. As well, the final, purposely unfocused close-up solarizes during its fade-out. These minor gripes aside, Damage really does sport one of the loveliest transfers out there, with perfect contrast, a lively, solid palette of browns, reds and greens, and rich detail that confounded my eyes. I hope more intimate, low-budget features are awarded this level of telecine care in the future. Soundwise, I found the dialogue occasionally too low but the music really resonates. The mix is again presented in Dolby Surround and, as per the nature of the film, there's nothing earth-shaking about it.

Supplementing the Damage are a (silly) trailer, bios, and a pleasant one-on-one interview with Louis Malle in which he dissects the film in a lighthearted manner. I miss Malle, who died of cancer in 1995. He never made a movie I truly loved, but he churned out a lot of admirable cinema. Dancing on the outskirts of the French New Wave movement, Malle directed truly accessible but distinctly European pictures. I believe this 15-minute featurette was derived using footage from Criterion's Damage LaserDisc; in any case, he's a joy to listen to, and I wish I could hear more from him regarding the finished film.

Both Crash and Damage take advantage of DVD's "seamless branching" feature. This infrequently utilized function allows a studio to mark points in a film; when a specific version of this film is played, these marks indicate to the player to skip to a later section of the disc. In the case of Crash, an NC-17 version of the movie can become an R-rated version at your command. Your player will pause briefly as it performs on-the-fly "edits"--the effect is much the same as a layer switch on an RSDL disc. Crash freeze-frames like mad throughout the R-rated film: the NC-17 cut runs 100 minutes, the R only 90 minutes. (For Damage, the difference between the 'rated' and 'unrated' is one extra minute of Binoche and Irons flopping around like carpet fish.) It's a very cool feature that may one day become a standard: no more guardian angel clerks cutting that oh-so-offensive glimpse of Kate Winslet's breasts from Titanic.-Bill Chambers