The initial idea was as beautiful as it was intriguing, in the purest Cronenbergian vein: GraveTech, a connected burial shroud slipped over the bodies of the deceased within the grave itself, allowing those left behind to watch, on a screen, the slow decomposition of their loved ones' flesh. It's a revolutionary invention dreamed up by Karsh(Vincent Cassel), a disconsolate 50-year-old who has been inconsolable since the death of his wife(Diane Kruger).
Les Linceuls will be released in cinemas from January 22, 2025.
Synopsis: 50-year-old Karsh is a successful businessman. Inconsolable since the death of his wife, he invents a revolutionary and controversial system, GraveTech, which allows the living to connect with their loved ones in their shrouds. One night, several graves, including his wife's, are vandalized. Karsh sets out to find the culprits.
The story is actually that of David Cronenberg himself, who explains that he has never recovered from the death of his wife, who passed away in 2017. The Shrouds is a great film about grief, that's for sure, but it's far from being the Canadian director's most accessible, as its arid staging tends to leave us by the wayside. We feel as if we've been watching an interminable funeral for two hours.
To play this bereaved double, Cronenberg called on Vincent Cassel(Les Promesses de l'Ombre, A Dangerous Method), a veritable carbon copy on screen - graying hair combed back, stile build and manner of movement. While the story is undoubtedly personal, it would seem that the director didn't want to open the doors of his persona too wide; theharshness of the (un)expressedfeelings and the dialogue that goes round in circles make any possibility of analogy impossible.
The film loses even more interest when it shifts into a detective story. A mindless investigation following the ransacking of the cemetery, in which Icelandic ecologists and then the Chinese are accused one after the other, and whose resolution is lazily thrown together, orally, by Karsh's brother-in-law, Maury(Guy Pearce). A narrative mishmash and a lack of soul that left us breathless.>
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