Watching a film in which human cells stop communicating properly, itself a metaphor for the breakdown in communication of the story's insular central character, is a peculiar experience. Human cells and a man's biology aren't your typical subjects in cinema, which makes Australian writer/director Eron Sheean's debut feature, Errors of the Human Body, an exercise as much in science as storytelling.
"I continue to be interested in subjects that have a scientific bent," says Sheean, whose first short film was about a human born from a rocky desert womb. "For instance, I'm developing a film about nanotechnology. As much as science fascinates me, I'm always more interested in our relationship to what we create and how it changes us for better or worse."
In his film, a brilliant geneticist, Dr Geoff Burton (Michael Eklund), is haunted by the death of his infant son and a suspicion that the laboratory he relocates to has created a lethal virus that he soon discovers is a little too close to home for comfort. It's a twisted tale that wouldn't feel out of place in Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg's pantheon of films. You could even say it's infected with the same sense of dread and dislocation as Cronenberg's work. It does, however, have a distinctly unique genesis and gestation.
"I had a short film in the Berlinale Film Festival in 2006 and met a scientist who was one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden," explains Sheean. "They just started an artist residency programme at the time. I came over from Australia a few months later to learn about molecular biology in the hope of developing an artistic project. It was only supposed to be for a few months, but it went on for over six years, on and off. As my interest grew, I thought the place and some of their bizarre and fascinating research projects made for great feature film material."
