Infinity Pool

 

Brandon Cronenberg's study in human debasement, Infinity Pool, is not nearly as debasing itself as critics say, nor as interesting as fans of the work of his father, David Cronenberg, would like.

Cronenberg pere may be known best for Scanners (1981), The Fly (1986), Crash (1996), which all pushed the envelope for the amount of bilious excretion, entrails and human bodily wreckage could be crammed into 100 minutes of film. Many of his most famous movies tested the audience's tolerance in the name of cinema.

Cronenberg fils has directed one other feature -- 2020's Possessor (which I have not seen).  Based on Infinity Pool, he seems to share his father's fascination for the distasteful and love of excess for its own sake.

The story is set on a remote island inhabited by vaguely Mediterranean townspeople who speak with vaguely Germanic accents and travel in vehicles with faintly Arabic but nonsensical signage. Wealthy people gather here just before the rainy season to misbehave in murderous ways. 

The ordinarily unflappable Alexander Skarsgård plays struggling writer James, who is vacationing with his wife, Em (the winsome Australian actress Cleopatra Coleman). They meet, seemingly by accident, Gabi (British starlet Mia Goth, who has turned menancing seductress into an artform) and her husband, Alban (French actor Jalil Lespert). It quickly becomes clear James and Em were marks for the cagey couple.

Soon they're introduced into a club of island regulars who all had been convicted of one of the country's arcane laws but escaped capital penalty through a unique -- and expensive -- scapegoating system, where living proxies are manufactured and punished for the crime and the real perp is freed. It all becomes intoxicating cocktail for unrepressed lawlessness and tribal hedonism. 

This might be Brandon Cronenberg's statement of the logical outcome when checks on entitlement don't exist. Once that point has been made, the tension in the film begins to unwind, and it becomes a waiting game until the wind shifts, the rains come in and all of the loathsome degradation goes swirling down the drain -- a rather "on the nose" metaphor for the expiation of the morning after.