Earlier this month noticed the UK launch of Pearl, a prequel to Ti West’s retro-horror X, starring and co-written by the extraordinary Mia Goth. A uniquely arresting display screen presence (take a look at the final-frame smile of Pearl for proof), Goth is again once more in one other jaw-dropping position that positively fizzes with playfully harmful pizzaz. She might take second billing to Swedish star Alexander Skarsgård on this Canadian-Hungarian-Croatian co-production however make no mistake – it’s her anarchic vitality that drives the deliciously outre and satirical third function from writer-director Brandon Cronenberg.
“The place are we?” asks James (Skarsgård), staring out from the terrace of an unique resort in direction of an anonymously blissful seaside on a distant vacation island. A minor writer whose debut novel, The Variable Sheath, owed its existence to his media mogul father-in-law, James has been blocked for the final six years. As of late, his rich spouse, Em (Cleopatra Coleman), can’t inform if he’s asleep or awake, significantly inside the dreamy confines of this stylish resort – a white palace in a poor nation, the place the peace of the super-rich is damaged sometimes by native protesters, largely saved at bay by barbed wire fences.
James has apparently come right here for “inspiration”, and he’s each flattered and flabbergasted when a fellow visitor, actor Gabi (Goth), tells him: “I beloved your guide”. Quickly, she and her husband, Alban (Jalil Lespert), are taking James and Em past the security of the resort compound to extra distant locales, the place sausages are fried and a cocktail of semen and piss is spilled upon the land. When James runs down a farmer whereas driving dwelling drunk, Gabi insists: “No police… This isn’t a civilised nation.” However the subsequent day, James finds himself in custody, the place the native eye-for-an-eye justice system has a weird get-out clause; an opportunity for rich prospects to be “doubled” – to witness and stay by their very own proxy dying.
“Do you are worried they obtained the mistaken man?” asks one other carelessly moneyed visitor. That’s a query (echoing a central theme of Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige) that rings all through Cronenberg’s movie – a Dostoevskian story of doppelganger paranoia, instructed with a classy cinematic relish paying homage to Gaspar Noé or Nicolas Winding Refn. Simply as wealth and poverty conflict on this island, so divided souls do battle right here, locked in masked battle with themselves because the wet season attracts ever nearer.
As with its predecessor Possessor, Infinity Pool tackles problems with transferred identities with a sticky tactility that retains issues visceral relatively than cerebral. From the opening scenes during which cinematographer Karim Hussain turns the world the wrong way up whereas Tim Hecker’s woozy rating thumps and groans, it’s clear we’re in for a heady expertise. Just like the Resort California, James can verify in any time he likes however he can by no means depart – whether or not by power of circumstance or his personal twisted volition. No marvel an more and more traumatised Em asks: “Is that this a dream?”, noting: “It will make extra sense.”
Actually, there’s a nightmarish logic at work, underpinning the oedipal contortions and hallucinogenic hardcore visions that progressively overwhelm our antihero. However there’s additionally a jet-black streak of Buñuelian bourgeois-baiting comedy, evidenced most hilariously after James lastly loses his rag when confronted with a gunpoint studying of a horrible evaluation of his horrible novel. He could also be OK with the killing of innocents, however this can be a step too far. Ha!
On the centre of all of it is Goth, who appears to be like set to swallow the display screen entire. Whether or not she’s slyly attractive James to comply with his personal ego into her arms or screaming like an avenging angel from the bonnet of an open-topped automotive, her capability to shift from the understated to the unhinged is breathtaking. Dan Martin’s squelchy “particular make-up and figurative results” might hold the viewers on their toes, however it’s Goth who offers the actual fireworks.
As for Cronenberg, whose father, David, pioneered the body-horror style with movies equivalent to Rabid, Videodrome and The Fly, he continues to forge his personal path, constructing upon the promise of his underrated 2012 debut function Antiviral to create a physique of labor that’s rising and mutating in terrifically sardonic style. It will not be for everybody, however I dived deep into Infinity Pool – twice – and loved the hell out of the expertise.
