To Infinity And Beyond

Depraved, dazed, weird and wonderful, Brandon Cronenberg knows how to take you on a wild ride – and the hedonistic Infinity Pool is perhaps his most delightfully deranged cinematic endeavour yet. 

Set in a gated resort on the imaginary island of La Tolqa, the filmmaker’s third feature film is as much a darkly comedic satire of wealth and privilege as it is a mind-bending psychological thriller. Named after the architectural optical illusion found in many a Malibu mansion, the film follows writer James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) who tussles with crippling imposter syndrome and a deep desire to feel better about himself, and his sugar-mommy, publishing nepo-baby wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman), as he searches for inspiration on vacation within the walls of their all-inclusive resort compound. And so, the muse seems to strike when they are convinced to leave those confines by Mia Goth’s Gabi and her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert). 

A tale of crime, violence, and decadence ensues, as Cronenberg delves into an exploration of what it means to be a singular human, to be a part of collective chaos, and to have the financial power to be unafraid of the consequences. Following on from his 2020 sophomore film Possessor, the director pushes the boundaries of horror, genre, and reality, contemplating themes of identity and morality through an ever-intense, nightmarish lens.

Having just returned from his first trip to Berlin Film Festival (“that was good vibes”) to his hometown of Toronto (“I’ve been reading The Satanic Verses and watching a lot of stuff”) Kitty Robson caught up with Cronenberg for MASSIVE as he readies for the European release of Infinity Pool, to chat about his unhinged heroine Mia Goth, why we’re all ready to Eat the Rich right now, and where he’s heading to next…

KR: Tell me about how Infinity Pool was born for you.

BC: It started as a short story that I was trying to write back in 2014, which was essentially just the first execution scene. It was someone in a fictional country who was watching an exact double of himself be executed. It was more purely about identity, punishment and justice in short story form… I never finished it as I’m a terrible prose writer, but then the other stuff came into my mind and it developed from there.

Was there any particular research or reading you came across that helped to shape the script?

The main reading I did was about personal identity philosophy: I read a collection of essays that looked historically at the ways people think about what it is to be a singular human, consistent identities throughout time. 

There were a lot of conversations around travel and tourism after lockdown, did that play a part in your story? 

Since we shot the film, Covid has really changed tourism in the sense that it’s very trend-driven now. Someone goes on Instagram saying, “You have to go to Mexico City,” by sharing all these shots of Mexico City and then everyone goes there. People are so hungry to be out in the world and to show everyone that they’re out in the world. Since Covid it’s really accelerated that need… But when we shot Infinity Pool, it was still a half-dead world.

How was it filming in 2021 in light of that? 

It was definitely interesting to be filming when things were just beginning to open up again. The resort we shot in in Croatia weren’t expecting any guests and were super eager for us to shoot there initially, but when we arrived it had opened up a lot and so in the end it was a super active resort. It was very, very busy. It was hard to shoot a film, especially different locations, because it was so crowded with people.

Did you have any strange experiences of your own at the resort? 

The strangest story is that the FBI were there at the same time as us on a team-building retreat, in the very same resort as us! So we had drunken FBI agents stumbling onto our set looking for Alexander Skarsgård, filming themselves with drones, sitting on the set next to the ‘Do Not Sit Here’ sign… Then they left and a T-Mobile corporate retreat came in next.

There’s a lot of Eat The Rich conversation happening right now both on screen and off, why do you think audiences are drawn to these themes?

It’s interesting, there is this wave of wealth-related films and television right now: White Lotus, Triangle of Sadness, The Menu and more. Obviously we’re seeking out these patterns, and it’s tempting to say that there is a pattern of this theme right now because of the state of the world. There is, of course, a completely alarming economic divide that seems to be increasing, especially because of the pandemic – it very much affected people differently depending on how much money they had going through it. People are enraged and frustrated and anxious. 

It’s tempting to tie this wave of filmmaking to that, but to be honest the film industry moves at such a glacial pace, all of these things were in development for so many years. Their reception might have something to do with the moment now, but certainly when I was writing this film, there was no way to predict the mood of 2023 or to know that it would be part of this wave so many years ago. It’s a consistent social problem, so if you’re making art that comments on society and satirises society, then you have to deal with that. 

Mia Goth is becoming a real unhinged heroine right now. Tell me about casting her for the role of Gabi, did you have anyone in mind when writing the script? 

I always try to never think of an actor in particular when I’m writing a script, because it’s so hard to cast anyone, the stars just have to align: it’s actor availability, it’s who wants to do your movie, it’s even like who has the right passport sometimes, in a co-production it gets really difficult… So  I try not to get stuck on a particular actor because it only leads to heartbreak! But Mia was someone I had been wanting to work with for many years, because I think she’s just one of those actors who has whatever that thing is that’s hard to articulate, that some performers have. As they’re on the screen, they’re just searing through it, they’re stealing every scene, they’re never making a boring choice: I think she’s been that way from the start. 

I first saw her in Nymphomaniac, I remember watching her in Suspiria and High Life and thinking how she was always so incredible. When I cast her, she hadn’t come out with X or Pearl yet, they’d just finished shooting X – I spoke to her when she was in New Zealand, because they were in the process of shooting Pearl as they shot the two films back-to-back over there. So it was a kind of coincidence that this was a part of a series of great horror films – I don’t know if mine’s great, but Ti [West’s] are great and she’s great in those films – so it’s a funny coincidence. 

Your film Possessor also explores identity and duplication. What draws you to these themes?

For a lot of people, art is about exploring what it is to be a human being in one way or another. So even if you’re making a very realistic drama, part of that is exploring human dynamics and our experiences as human beings. So maybe I’m stuck on a particular version of that, which has to do with, on a basic level, what it is to be human: how we perform our identities; the way that we construct our identities; the sort of tension between how we see ourselves as these concrete consistent entities, in a very simple way, and how that’s totally at odds with the fact that we are not that, we’re this constantly shifting collaborative fiction that we invent with other people. That’s just my version of dealing with what it is to be a person. 

What do you think about the term “elevated horror”? How does it feel that some horror is deemed more artistically worthy than other?

I’m not crazy about it… I think it’s all horror, I don’t like that terminology. I think that sort of thing tends to be useful for marketing and for film criticism to categorise these things. 

What keeps you making films? What drives you to create?

I find it’s a compulsive thing, not necessarily films in particular. Before I was interested in making films I was trying to write fiction, making visual art and playing music. Why does anyone do that kind of stuff? It satisfies a part of me, it creates a framework within which I can operate and translate the world, deal with my own experiences and kexplore and function. It’s more of a necessity than anything else, but in such a personal and abstract way. 

Do you remember the moment you fell in love with cinema?

I was never really a cinephile growing up. I’ve always liked movies and thought film was a great artform, but I came to working in it in kind of a roundabout way, I was more of a bookish kid… I definitely work with people who always love films and specifically loved films, who it was inevitable that they would end up being in the industry, but it wasn’t like that for me. It represents a mash up of these interests for me: a chance to pair writing with a visual art and music, and keep my toe in all of these different mediums that I enjoy.

Where do you see your work going next?

I have a few things that I’m working on: I’m trying to get a script based on a J. G. Ballard novel Super-Cannes made as a limited series; I’ve got a space horror film called Dragon that I’ve been developing for a number of years. It’s hard to predict, as anything that you’re working on for years in film could either die a horrible death or happen tomorrow. You never really know, which keeps things exciting! 

Infinity Pool is in cinemas this Friday.