For anyone who wanted “The White Lotus” to dig a little deeper into its characters’ hypocrisy, privileged American tourism fantasies and class warfare waged in poshly exotic locales, Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature, “Infinity Pool,” is the answer to your prayers.
Be warned: This is no middle-of-the-road picnic. Like his father, David Cronenberg (”Scanners,” “Crimes of the Future” and so much in between), the younger Cronenberg as writer-director bores in on all sorts of grisliness and body horror, though never settling for kicks, or ultraviolence for the sake of cheap, sadistic fun. The cool, sleek filmmaking and the sinister escalations of nerve exhibited by Cronenberg in “Infinity Pool” may go right to the edge in terms of sexual content and bloody deeds, or get momentarily lost in the narrative here and there. But this is a confident, considered piece of mind-bending filmmaking, with something like a moral compass.
Failed one-time novelist James (Alexander Skarsgard) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman), a wealthy publisher’s daughter, are vacationing in the fictional Croatia-adjacent country of La Tolqa. (Cronenberg made the movie in Croatia and Hungary.) One day at breakfast, James meets one of his very few literary fans, aspiring actress Gabi (Mia Goth). She and her architect partner Alban (Jalil Lespert) are also staying at the securely locked-down resort, where “guests are not allowed beyond the border of the compound,” as a guard says at one point, beneath the barbed wire front gate.
