Les Linceuls

A step-sister of Crimes of the Future, this time set in the realistic present and more oriented toward high-tech gadgets. The stylish Vincent Cassel in a Tesla, scenes of his deceased, scarred wife Diane Kruger following an amputation, her alive-and-well sister Diane Kruger seducing her widowed brother-in-law Cassel, progressive VIP cemeteries with a video system monitoring the dead, a possible political conspiracy to misuse those systems on the part Russia and China…and so on. Not enough? Cronenberg once again takes a stab at a mysterious conversational detective flick with a great atmosphere, original ideas, mysterious-sounding scientific terms that no one understands and intimate sex shrouded in the bizarre. And of course with laughably absurd plot development around all of the characters, which seems to be terribly serious, but beneath the surface it’s nothing more than the fragile fantasy of a frightened boy. Judging from the feeble applause of more than a thousand journalists, there aren’t many of us left who will still tolerate such a thing. [Cannes FF] (22/05/2024)