The latest sci-fi horror fable from Canadian writer-director Brandon Cronenberg is his most deliciously dark, richly allegorical nightmare vision to date. A bleakly satirical, sexually graphic, hallucinatory thriller about wealthy tourists resorting to debauched savagery in a fictional foreign country, Infinity Pool proved divisive at its Sundance premiere last month, earning rave reviews for its stylish excess but also criticism for its loathsome characters, lurid plot and fetishistic violence. To fans of vintage cult cinema, of course, these are all plus points. Cronenberg’s third feature makes its European debut in Berlin this week ahead of wider international release in March and April.
Mostly filmed on the picturesque coast of Croatia, Infinity Pool takes place in a luxury resort in the imaginary country of Li Tolqa, a sun-soaked magnet for moneyed westerners, who are insulated from the poverty, violence and religiously strict laws outside by the razor-wire fences of their hotel compound. The story initially seems to riff on familiar class-war themes, joining the current flood of caustic eat-the-rich screen dramas about decadent First Worlders suffering karmic calamity during hellish holidays, from The White Lotus to Triangle of Sadness to Speak No Evil. But while acid social commentary is clearly woven into Cronenberg’s screenplay, there are deeper, stranger libidinal forces at work here. This depraved deep dive into the lawless regions of the human psyche is more personal than political, more Triangle of Madness than Triangle of Sadness.
Sullen author James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is in Li Tolqa desperately seeking inspiration for the belated sequel to his debut novel, accompanied and funded by his glamorous, long-suffering girlfriend Em (Cleopatra Coleman). Both appear catatonically bored until seductive, solicitous Gabi (Mia Goth on blazing good form) take an interest in James, shamelessly flattering his fragile writer’s ego. Their flirtation becomes more explicitly sexual when Gabi and her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert) invite their fellow guests on an illicit excursion away from the resort. But this boozy day out ends in tragedy when James accidentally knocks down a local farmer, killing him instantly. Gabi insists that nobody call the police, who are notoriously corrupt and violent, but James is quickly arrested and charged anyway.
Under Li Tolqa’s strict laws, ruled by honour killings and blood feuds, James now faces the prospect of execution by the dead man’s eldest son, who is just nine years old. Alternatively, in an inspired plot twist, he also has the chance to pay the state a hefty sum to create an exact clone of himself, complete with the same memories and emotions, to be killed in his place. This privileged option, as explained by menacingly deadpan detective Thresh (Thomas Kretschmann), is part of country’s special “tourist initiative”, open only to foreigners and diplomats but not ordinary citizens. James agrees to this surreal doubling process, depicted here in one of the film’s most enticingly weird scenes, the science of which Cronenberg rightly leaves teasingly opaque.
Legally obliged to witness his double’s execution, shown by Cronenberg in gory blood-spurting detail, James finds himself shocked and distressed, but also a little excited. After contriving to lose his passport, he sends Em home ahead of him, staying longer in Li Tolqa to spend more time with his debauched new friends. His erotic chemistry with Gabi reaches boiling point in a feverish, drug-fuelled, horror-tinged orgy scene, a tour de force of mind-bending visuals. But it soon becomes clear that this libertine party posse, led by an increasingly unhinged Gabi, are a thrill kill cult of repeat offenders taking advantage of the country’s unique cloning loophole to commit brutal crimes. This is murder tourism, a barbaric bloodsport in which he line between prey and predator becomes dangerously blurred.
With its gated community full of cultured professionals reverting to kinky savagery as soon as the thin veneer of civilisation is stripped away, the plot to Infinity Pool unavoidably invokes the work of cult sci-fi novelist JG Ballard, author of Crash and High-Rise. Indeed, Cronenberg’s iconic film-maker father David adapted Crash into a notorious film, of course, while Brandon himself is now working on a TV miniseries based on Ballard’s novel Super-Cannes. But the initial spark for the story was actual something that happened to the director in real life, an unsettling holiday at a Dominican Republic resort surrounded by barbed wire fences, which shielded foreign tourists from the poverty and squalor outside.
Intense and gripping, Infinity Pool is a deluxe exercise in pulp cinema, a revved-up joyride into Hell with just few speed bumps along the way. Cronenberg could have spent a little more energy exploring the wilder possibilities of the cloning subplot and less time with the boorish, bloodthirsty tourists. The Li Tolqan characters are barely more than sketches, while the creation of a brutally backward nation using elements of Latin American, Middle Eastern and Balkan culture arguably invites closer critical examination. In acting terms, Skarsgård is a little colourless, perhaps in keeping with his generally vacant anti-hero. But Goth blows everyone else off screen with her career-best performance to date, relishing her slow transformation from demure groupie to psychotic weapon of mass seduction.
As ever with Cronenberg, visuals are strong across the board, from kaleidoscopic credit sequences rendered in stylishly retro typefaces to strikingly eerie production design, especially Dan Martin’s grotesque face masks, designed to reflect the altered states of Li Tolqa’s druggy folklore rituals. In his third collaboration with the director, cinematographer Karim Hussain makes virtuoso use of off-kilter angles, neon-drenched colours and artfully distorted lensing while electronic composer Tim Hecker’s percussive, droning score exudes potent dystopian dread. It may be heresy to say this, but Cronenberg Jr. is making far more challenging and thrilling films than his father David nowadays. A cult classic in the making, Infinity Pool is a very welcome addition to the Cronenberg Cinematic Universe. Send in the clones.
Director, screenwriter: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman, Jalil Lespert, Amanda Brugel, John Ralston, Jeffrey Ricketts, Caroline Boulton, Thomas Krestchmann
Cinematography: Karim Hussain
Editing: James Vandewater
Production designer: Zosia Mackenzie
Costume designer: Maria Popovits-Fater
Music: Tim Hecker
Special makeup and figurative effects: Dan Martin
Producers: Karen Harnisch, Andrew Cividino, Christina Piovesan, Noah Segal, Rob Cotterill, Anita Juka, Daniel Kresmery, Jonathan Halperyn
Production companies: Neon (US), Topic Studios (US), Film Forge (Canada), Elevation Pictures (Canada), 4Film (Croatia), Hero Squared (Hungary)
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Special)
In English
118 minutes
