Infinity Pool (2023)
Country: CAN/CRO/HUN
Technical: col/1.78:1 117m
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert
Synopsis:
A privileged young couple holiday at a Mediterranean island retreat, within a gated community where guests are forbidden from exploring outside for their own safety. The husband, who is struggling to produce a second book, and bridles at being 'kept' by his 'editor's daughter' wife, is first initiated, then infantilised, by another couple more practised in staving off boredom.
Review:
Belonging to a subgenre of films that became increasingly preoccupied with what one might call the 'dystopia of the wealthy' (High-Rise, The Menu, Silent Land, Triangle of Sadness), Cronenberg Jr's finely calibrated but awesomely overlong essay in weirdness addresses the question of moral choice. If our wealth rendered us immune from punishment, how would we behave; and, could we become addicted to watching our double die in our place? (This is the only way to justify the hero's readiness so quickly to leap from the frying pan into the fire midway through.) Unsettlingly beautiful and bleak as a vision of vacuity it may be, with an impressive mise-en-scène; it is also sickeningly brutal in its detail, its final image disposing one to a suspicion of self-portraiture.
Country: CAN/CRO/HUN
Technical: col/1.78:1 117m
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert
Synopsis:
A privileged young couple holiday at a Mediterranean island retreat, within a gated community where guests are forbidden from exploring outside for their own safety. The husband, who is struggling to produce a second book, and bridles at being 'kept' by his 'editor's daughter' wife, is first initiated, then infantilised, by another couple more practised in staving off boredom.
Review:
Belonging to a subgenre of films that became increasingly preoccupied with what one might call the 'dystopia of the wealthy' (High-Rise, The Menu, Silent Land, Triangle of Sadness), Cronenberg Jr's finely calibrated but awesomely overlong essay in weirdness addresses the question of moral choice. If our wealth rendered us immune from punishment, how would we behave; and, could we become addicted to watching our double die in our place? (This is the only way to justify the hero's readiness so quickly to leap from the frying pan into the fire midway through.) Unsettlingly beautiful and bleak as a vision of vacuity it may be, with an impressive mise-en-scène; it is also sickeningly brutal in its detail, its final image disposing one to a suspicion of self-portraiture.
Country: CAN/CRO/HUN
Technical: col/1.78:1 117m
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert
Synopsis:
A privileged young couple holiday at a Mediterranean island retreat, within a gated community where guests are forbidden from exploring outside for their own safety. The husband, who is struggling to produce a second book, and bridles at being 'kept' by his 'editor's daughter' wife, is first initiated, then infantilised, by another couple more practised in staving off boredom.
Review:
Belonging to a subgenre of films that became increasingly preoccupied with what one might call the 'dystopia of the wealthy' (High-Rise, The Menu, Silent Land, Triangle of Sadness), Cronenberg Jr's finely calibrated but awesomely overlong essay in weirdness addresses the question of moral choice. If our wealth rendered us immune from punishment, how would we behave; and, could we become addicted to watching our double die in our place? (This is the only way to justify the hero's readiness so quickly to leap from the frying pan into the fire midway through.) Unsettlingly beautiful and bleak as a vision of vacuity it may be, with an impressive mise-en-scène; it is also sickeningly brutal in its detail, its final image disposing one to a suspicion of self-portraiture.