Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool

Writer & Director - Brandon Cronenberg

2023, Canada-Croatia-Hungary

Stars - Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Colem

 

The Cronenberg brand always delivers. Impotent with writer’s block, author James (Alexander Skarsgård) – retreats with  Em (Cleopatra Coleman) to an holiday resort to relax and for him to discover his mojo again. On this fictional island of La Tolqa, they meet Gabi (Mia Goth), who says she’s a fan and fun and introduces them to an increasingly hedonistic group of holiday goers.

 

When he accidentally kills a local, James discovers that the natives have a punishment system where they can make a clone of the offender to take the penalty – in this case: the death sentence. Cronenberg introduces cloning into the mix to lay bare the selfishness, privilege, decadence, etc, of the upper-class tourists exploiting and abusing the local people and customs. These people never suffer the consequences. It’s an easy target, but an ever deserving one. Seemingly having avoided the death penalty, James is somewhat perversely thrilled at this brush with mortality and getting-away-with-it and throws in with this irresponsible crowd. But of course, they just might be clones themselves… perhaps losing a little empathy and humanity with each cloning? It’s all something to laugh about over a night of hedonism and drink.

 

 

 

There’s not quite the hyperviolence of ‘Possessor’, but until things get going, Cronenberg makes sure we have traditional masks that look like meat packing and a graphic hand-job to be getting on with.  Skarsgård, as tall and handsome as he is and coming from the machismo of ‘The Northman’, is increasingly convincing as a man out of his depth and self-sabotaged by insecurities and gullibility. After ‘Pearl’, Goth ranks up her Horror Girl status and solidifies her reputation as a considerable presence. There are Cronenberg’s arty-trippy sequences where, although they don’t, things look like they might go the way of ‘Society’. These may lose some viewers and straightforward narrative drive, but that’s the point: everything slides apart. “Where are we?” James asks at the start, but by the latter half, he is thoroughly lost in hallucinogenic decadence.

 

The appeal of irresponsibility is chief here, but you must have the privilege and money to get away with it. And the victims are left shellshocked and ruined, but still enamoured of its allure and the faded glamour despite themselves. The descent into psychedelic mind-bending will lose a few, and as a cautionary tale about falling in the wrong people it won’t leave as much of a mark as ‘Speak No Evil’ or ‘Wake in Fright’, but Brandon Cronenberg continues to assert himself as a reliable source of unhinged ideas told in a clean, near-clinical but empathic style.

 

The Boys From Brazil

 

Franklin J Schaffner, 1978, USA/UK

 

“Who would believe such a story?” Liebermann (Lawrence  Olivier) asks at one point. Well...

Schaffner’s adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel goes globe-trotting, and stacks set-pieces and villainy as if James Bond might pop up at any moment. The ingenious central idea – cloning Hitler! – is full of morally challenging questions, yet when this could have been a chilling and threatening film, it is simply an engaging but silly thriller sci-fi. The premise wins brownie points for sheer absurdity, but this is severely compromised by broad representations of nationalities and some dodgy accents (“Do you not understand English, you arse?” in the most snobbish and ridiculous London clipped affectation you can muster, for instance). Of course, the cloning premise is perhaps not quite as unlikely as it may have seemed in the Seventies, but there is little grey area here.

 

But then there’s the showdown. The two old actors – Lawrence Olivier and Gregory Peck, no less, bringing hints of mainstream respectability – set eyes on one another, snarl and then start biting chunks out of one another until bloodthirsty Dobermans break up the fight; then Hitler himself walks in, sees the bloody mess and starts taking photographs. It’s a wonderfully over-the-top, grand guignol moment that’s worth the price of admission alone.

An engaging enough actioner, but a missed opportunity and certainly of the era.