Crash is a 1996 Canadian erotic thriller film[5] written, produced and directed by David Cronenberg, based on J. G. Ballard's 1973 novel of the same name.

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.

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".

When James responds that he did not achieve satisfaction during his own encounter with a coworker due to an interruption by a film crew member, Catherine replies, "Maybe the next one."

While trapped in the fused wreckage, Dr. Helen Remington, the driver and the dead passenger's wife, exposes a breast to James as she removes the shoulder harness of her seatbelt.

As they leave the hospital, Helen and James begin an affair, driven primarily by their shared experience of the car crash.

Although Vaughan initially claims that he is interested in the "reshaping of the human body by modern technology," his true project is living out the philosophy that the car crash is a "benevolent psychopathology that beckons toward us."

James notices some unexplained blood on the fender and drives them through a car wash while Vaughan and Catherine have sex in the back seat.

James subsequently has a tryst with Gabrielle, another member of the group, whose legs are clad in restrictive steel braces and who has a vulva-like scar on the back of one of her thighs from a crash injury.

Catherine unbuckles her seatbelt as she sees James approaching, and he rams into the back of her car, causing it to topple down into a grassy median.

As the couple kisses and begins to have sex partly underneath the wrecked vehicle, James whispers to a crying Catherine, "Maybe the next one."

David Cronenberg had not read any of J. G. Ballard's works and first heard of the novel Crash in the 1980s from a critic that stated that he should adapt it into a film.

[12] Cronenberg was concerned that Peter Suschitzky would be unable to perform the cinematography for the film due to his commitments to Mars Attacks!

[18] He noted that a moment has come in the history of mankind when sex-free artificial reproduction of the species became available: "We could literally put a moratorium on sex for 100 years and we still would not extinguish the human race."

[19] In the fantasy, semi-abstract world of Ballard and Cronenberg, the vectors of thanatos and eros coincide in a single act of intercourse through man-made technology.

Jonathan Rosenbaum notes that in the film, human skin is likened to the glitzy, fetishized surface of cars; the camera slides seamlessly from one to the other.

[30] The controversial subject matter prompted the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard to orchestrate an aggressive campaign to ban Crash in the United Kingdom.

In response to this outcry, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) inquired with a Queen's Counsel and a psychologist, none of whom found any justification to ban it, and 11 disabled people, who saw no offense with its portrayal of the physically challenged.

[31] Clive Barker stated that the importance of family values and morality during the 1997 general election fuelled the controversy due to local authorities in Cardiff, Kirklees, North Lanarkshire, Walsall and Westminster banning the film.

Cronenberg would later confirm that a Fine Line executive shared the rumor that Turner's distaste for the movie was the reason for its delay.

AMC Entertainment Inc., the second-largest U.S. theater chain at the time, said it was posting security guards outside about 30 screens showing the movie to ensure minors did not get inside.

The consensus reads: "Despite the surprisingly distant, clinical direction, Crash's explicit premise and sex is classic Cronenberg territory.

[38] In his contemporary review, Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, writing: Crash is about characters entranced by a sexual fetish that, in fact, no one has.

Hoberman praised the film highly, noting the melancholy overtones and unconventional dry humor that includes cars mimicking human sexual activity or vice versa (for instance, "a close-up of an automatic car window slowly rising, the running-gag equation of tailgating and rear-entry intercourse").