03/04/2023 - Guy Pearce has also joined the Canadian auteur’s latest comeback project, set to begin production next month

Actor Vincent Cassel (© Georges Biard) and actress Diane Kruger (© Harald Krichel)

David Cronenberg will continue probing “the new flesh” with his upcoming feature The Shrouds, set to begin shooting in early May in his longtime home base of Toronto. Vincent Cassel, gearing up for his third collaboration with the director after Eastern Promises [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and A Dangerous Method [+see also:
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interview: The team of A Dangerous Met…
film profile], is the lead, joined in principal roles by Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds [+see also:
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film profile]) and Guy Pearce (Memento). The film will be a co-production between France and Canada, with Saïd Ben Saïd taking the production reins for the former (as well as handling world sales through SBS International) and Martin Katz continuing his recent stewarding of the director’s projects through Prospero Pictures.

Cronenburg returns to science-fiction material and self-penned, oft-outré screenplays following Crimes of the Future [+see also:
film review
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film profile], and the plot of his new movie tracks Karsh (Cassel), an “innovative” businessman and grieving widower, who constructs a device enabling mourners to connect with their dead loved ones. This tool, first installed at a cemetery he runs, allows clients to watch their departed decompose in real time. But when several graves at the location are vandalised, including that of Karsh’s late wife, the mystery of the culprit and motive will drive him to re-evaluate his life, marriage and fidelity to her memory.

Cronenberg himself lost his wife of almost 40 years, Carolyn Zeifman, in 2017; at a press conference at last year’s San Sebastián Film Festival, he described the film as being “very personal”. The concept was originally pitched to Netflix as a limited series, and the streamer rejected the project after reading the first two episodes. Talking to Indiewire, the director called them “very conservative”, yet he “still thanked them because I wrote a script and I wouldn’t have done that if it hadn’t been for their enthusiasm”.

Crimes of the Future, which premiered at Cannes last year, put an end to the director’s eight-year absence from feature filmmaking. The film divided audiences at initial screenings, and in spite of its starry cast list of Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart, it had trouble finding the theatrical buyers typical for a Cronenberg project. Yet it garnered stronger critical notices relative to his previous 2010s features, and stuck with film journalists well enough to have a presence on year-end lists, including topping Film Comment’s.