AN EXQUISITE MADNESS.

CRONENBERG, David, 1943-; MCGRATH, Patrick, 1950-

For most of his career, David Cronenberg had a distinctive image: staring through large, black-framed glasses, he looked like a scientist on the verge of a scary discovery. But a few years ago, the director underwent laser eye surgery and got rid of the glasses. From his early days as a purveyor of biological horror, Cronenberg has developed a reputation for coolly examining things that make the rest of us squeamish. Since then he's made movies about twin gynecologists ("Dead Ringers"), tumescent typewriters ("Naked Lunch"), car wreck sex ("Crash"), and umbilical game pods ("eXistenZ"). In April 2003, the Canadian director turns 60, and his pathological gaze now seems more keenly focused than ever. With "Spider", his 15th feature, he's created the most austere and restrained film of his career. It's also one of his best, a chilly masterpiece of Freudian psychodrama. Given the title, and Cronenberg's past fetish for skin-crawling creatures, you might get the wrong idea. But there are no spiders in "Spider". The title refers to the nickname of the central character, a schizophrenic played with febrile intensity by Ralph Fiennes. And the only creature in this film is the man's skittering imagination. Based on the novel by British writer Patrick McGrath, who also wrote the screenplay, "Spider" is set in London's bleak East End. Directing as if through Spider's eyes, Cronenberg conveys the quiet landscape of English repression with exquisitely composed images of industrial dread -- from the fires of a gasworks looming over a canal to the brick arches of a railway bridge overgrown by weeds.