Like the morbidly obese protagonist of his new film The Whale, Darren Aronofsky has become accustomed to people recoiling in disgust. With gruelling melodramas such as Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan the American director has won numerous awards and admirers but has also been vilified for his graphic depictions of human suffering. This reached its apotheosis (one hopes) with 2017’s Mother!, in which he put Jennifer Lawrence through a torturous mangle of home invasion and gross-out allegory.
Audiences scarred by that experience may approach his latest film with trepidation. I was one of them, as I admit to him when we meet in a smart central London hotel suite. It doesn’t help that the opening shot of The Whale shows the enormous and sweat-lacquered Charlie (played by Brendan Fraser) masturbating, wheezing and turning an alarming shade of mauve. My first thought, I tell him, was: “Oh God, is this going to be . . .” He finishes the thought for me: “. . . another Darren Aronofsky?”
