It's Cronenberg's narratively tightest film. It does feel rushed, not to mention a bit silly (adoption is that easy?). It's quite an ambitious attempt to produce both an accessible, mainstream film and still explore the same thematic preoccupations of earlier work: the limitations of one's physicality, the fragility of the body, permanent scarring, the body as identity, identity in general (What does it mean "to be"?), etc. The violence is devastating, too, both in its literal depiction and allegorical internal connections - the violent trauma of child birth, the sleaziness of organised prostitution, the horror of death, the undercurrent of sexual envy (the Turkish bath scene is visceral and sweaty, it's like an event at the original Olympic Games; horrific, homoerotic, humane).