The science fiction parallel universe of eXistenZ isn't a special effects-created alien landscape, but a more exotic and murky terrain: the untapped recesses of the human mind.

In eXistenZ, Canadian writer and director David Cronenberg creates a world dominated by realer-than-real virtual reality role-playing games, where manufactured dreams are a commodity and one creator of these all-consuming diversions, Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), becomes a new kind of superstar. Through Allegra, Cronenberg can also explore the tension between market demands and artistic expression, a topic this idiosyncratic and consummate filmmaker is intimately familiar with (witness his recent stint as the highly controversial jury president at the Cannes Film Festival).

With that in mind, he positions the ultra-successful but reclusive Allegra as the target of a fatwa (a very conscious allusion to Salman Rushdie) because of the radical effects of her work not only on game-players, but the culture at large. When an assassination attempt interrupts a focus group try-out of Allegra's new game (dubbed eXistenZ) she flees accompanied by a most unlikely bodyguard, Ted Pikul (Jude Law), a public relations man for her sponsor, Antenna Research.

While they're on the road (in an eerily vacant landscape), Allegra convinces the penetration-phobic Ted to be fitted with a bioport, an orifice created at the base of the spine where the umbilical cord of the game pods can be hooked straight into the human nervous system, because she needs a "friendly" partner to test out the viability of her game. From that point on, eXistenZ exists as an alternative reality detective story, with Cronenberg effortlessly shifting the narrative between the game's complex internal logic and the bland, passive outside world (where once-popular sports like skiing have been supplanted by their virtual counterparts).

With the bioports and game pods, a hybrid of organic and computer components, horrormeister Cronenberg continues his fascination with the violation and transformation of the human body (The Fly, Dead Ringers, Crash) as well as the bizarro creatures formed by the fevered junkie imagination in his adaptation of William S. Burrough's Naked Lunch (1991).

There's also a wonderfully subversive sexuality to the intimate connection between humans and their games, a pleasure principle formed by the fusing of flesh and hardware that creates an ironic eroticism; after plugging-in, the body is rendered immobile while simulated images stimulate the brain.

Using a welcome low-tech approach to scifi, Cronenberg relies on solid acting to give his story an all-important anchor. At first, his use of recognizable performers with distinctive personae (Willem Dafoe, Ian Holm, Christopher Eccleston, Don McKellar) in small, eccentric roles is off-putting, but it pays off marvelously in the end where he pulls a major twist.

Disposable in the best sense of the word, eXistenZ shows the addictive quality of elaborately constructed mind games, but also demonstrates how much can be accomplished by pulling the plug.

© 1999, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.

Writer and Director: David Cronenberg | Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky | Music: Howard Shore | Production Design: Carol Spier | Costume Design: Denise Cronenberg | Editing: Ronald Sanders | Producers: David Cronenberg, Andras Hamori and Robert Lantos | Released by Dimension Films | Running time: 97 minutes | Rated R

Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh (Allegra Geller), Jude Law (Ted Pikul), Ian Holm (Kiri Vinokur), Willem Dafoe (Gas), Don McKellar (Yevgeny Nourish), Callum Keith Rennie (Hugo Carlaw), Robert A. Silverman (D'Arcy Nader), Kris Lemche (Noel Dichter), Sarah Polley (Merle), James Kirchner (Landry), Christopher Eccleston (Seminar Leader), Vik Sahay (Male Assistant), Kirsten Johnson (Female Assistant), Oscar Hsu (Chinese Waiter), Balázs Koós (Male Volunteer), Stephanie Belding (Female Volunteer), and Gerry Quigley (Trout Farm Worker).