While Brandon Cronenberg’s filmography up to this point has shared some similarities with the work of his father (emphasis on body horror, fascination with interfaces, bleak sense of humour), he has also developed his own style and flavour that has helped keep him out of his father’s shadow. Where David fixated on the body as it changes, be it from internal or external forces, Brandon focuses specifically on the body (and mind) as it disintegrates under the weight of capitalistic systems. Antiviral took the idea of ‘viral star’ to its icky yet logical conclusion, Possessor showed that the workplace demands psychological compartmentalising even at the best of times, and with Infinity Pool, we get a class satire along the same lines as something like Triangle Of Sadness, only I’d argue that this hits much harder.
Like with Possessor, I am quite impressed with how fleshed out this film is in its ideas. Each individual theme already sparks a lot of intrigue, but they become even greater when put next to each other. As writer James (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) unwind on vacation at a resort in Li Tolqa, a fictional island country, there’s already some juicy material on offer. The resort itself is class grotesquery to the extreme in its lavishness, but what really draws attention is the ‘cultural entertainment’ on offer. Namely, Bollywood dancing, Chinese cuisine, and some highly questionable Jewish cosplay, among other things.
It definitely speaks to the absurdity of going to another country just to do things you could be doing at home… but on two separate fronts, that is shown to be inaccurate. For Li Tolqa, all this appropriation is ultimately a means to sanitise their own ethnic image, given the blood vengeance executions that are doled out to criminals. And for the tourists, once James gets together with Gabi (Mia Goth), we discover that even that extreme punishment has its own loophole. Namely that, with enough money, those who are lined up to be executed can simply clone themselves, and have the clone (complete with all their memories and experiences) die in their place.
There’s a lot to unpack just from that main idea. How the rich regularly flee to countries with more lenient laws to get away from trouble in the homeland, how fines end up being a fee to disregard the rule of law entirely (which ends up punishing the poor far more than the rich), how vacationers tend to compartmentalise what happens on holiday as not mattering once they get back home (‘What goes on tour stays on tour’), how we view our past transgressions as if they were done by a different person (‘that was the old me’) and even showing the ultimate form of self-harm in literally watching yourself die.
It feels like a refinement of similar ideas from Eli Roth’s Hostel, albeit delivered in a less juvenile fashion and properly holding both sides of the equation to account for their involvement, combined with the libertine horrorshow of The Picture Of Dorian Gray, where the damage left by careless hedonism isn’t put into a painting, but onto another human body. It also taps into the core idea of where law and individual morality overlap: What would you do if you knew you could get away with it?
To that end, Skarsgård shows off more of his primal masculinity, as he did with The Northman, as his descent into wanton violence and lust burns away at the façade he puts up and reveals something truly ugly. That’s an aspect that’s reinforced in the casting, since the main four initially consist of an Australian actress playing an Australian (Coleman), a British actress playing a Brit (Goth), a French actor playing a Swiss-Frenchman (Jalil Lespert as Gabi’s husband)… and a Swedish actor playing an American (Skarsgård).
As much as I could just keep going on about how much I love the thematic content here, I also have to give credit where it’s due for how fucking good the film craft is here as well. Karim Hussain’s cinematography gives ample material for mindfuck montages as we see James immerse himself ever deeper into his vices, which editor James Vandewater turns into psychedelic gold, while ambient artist Tim Hecker’s soundtrack creates a vivid nightmare soundscape to bring out the extent of the self-destruction taking place.
The ultraviolent and psychosexual imagery that gets smeared across the frame is at once breath-catching and highly unsettling, and yet it’s balanced out by some sickly comedic timing that shows this film is aware of how truly bonkers it can get. Beyond everything else I’ve brought up, what most surprised me is that there’s a scene that reminded me of the infamous “You can’t piss on hospitality” scene from Troll II, which… I dunno, kind of feels like a mantra for everything going on here.
This is the kind of buckwild but brainy shit I can get
behind. Along with giving Mia Goth another chance to shine in the spotlight
(the amount of scenery chewing she does here is mesmerising, and putting this
next to Pearl is an ungodly display of range), I just love how
much this film got me thinking about over the course of just under two
hours, while delivering on some highly visceral psycho-thrills on top of that.
It is at once a scathing takedown of privilege, and a showing that Brandon
Cronenberg isn’t content just to get by on his own privilege.
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