It’s been four years since Karsh lost his wife.
It probably feels less, considering Karsh (Vincent Cassel) owns both the graveyard where she is buried and the restaurant next door. That’s where he takes dates and discloses that his beloved resides nearby. It’s also where he points out the plot next to her that’s reserved for him. I’ll say this: at least he’s upfront.
Many spouses hope their loved ones move on and find happiness after they pass, but it doesn’t look like Karsh is interested in being one of those survivors. And maybe neither is writer-director David Cronenberg. The longtime Canadian body-horrorist has been making audiences squeamish since the 1970s. But in his latest, The Shrouds, there’s a sense that the squeamishness relates to real-world grief, grounding this near-future sci-fi story obsessed with death.
Karsh has developed a high-tech burial shroud that can provide real-time images of a corpse as it decomposes. His Toronto-based graveyard, which will soon be expanding to Reykjavík and Budapest, is replete with headstones that allow family members a chance to watch their loved ones melt into the Earth. It’s morbid and dark and icky and completely understandable. I want to know everything about my spouse’s day. If she were to die, wouldn’t I be just as curious about that experience as I would her encounters at the office?
But the world being what it is, Karsh’s graveyard is vandalized, and his software is hacked. Is this the work of the Chinese, the Russians or someone else? Enter Karsh’s former brother-in-law, Maury (Guy Pearce), a paranoid programmer, and Maury’s ex-wife, Terry (Diane Kruger), a down-to-earth dog groomer who gave up much to not encounter the suffering of others.
Kruger does triple duty as Terry, her deceased sister Becca — who we see in Karsh’s flashbacks — and as the voice of Hunny, Karsha’s AI assistant who might be angling for more. Roles here are murky, and that’s by design. Karsh’s mourning confounds reality. Some nights, his dead Becca visits him in a state of cancer, her naked body carved and scarred by disease and doctors. On other nights, she is healthy and horny.
Then, when Terry, who looks identical to the deceased but with shorter hair, develops a strange kink for Karsh, you can feel the inevitable undoing. Ditto when the AI assistant starts to glitch and overstep the boundaries of decorum. Then there’s Karsh’s relationship with a widowed client, Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt). Soo-Min is blind yet yearns for the very connection that Karsh’s tech visually provides. It’s all very unreal. And it’s all very plausible.
And though The Shrouds is very much about death, there’s little here that feels resolved. It’s been more than seven years since Cronenberg lost Carolyn, his partner of almost 40 years, and it’s evident in The Shrouds that he’s nowhere close to letting go. Cassel, with his slicked-back white hair, sunken face and all-black get-up, cuts an image so similar to Cronenberg you’ll swear you’re watching the director on screen. Sharp-eyed viewers will catch a glimpse of the real Cronenberg in one scene, and it’s bound to make you laugh.
But The Shrouds is no laughing matter. Grief is how we keep the dead from disappearing, even though so many tell us that the only way forward is to move on. But move on from what, exactly? “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never loved at all,” they say. True, but that’s hardly a comfort when you’ve lost all you’ve ever wanted.
ON SCREEN: The Shrouds is now playing in theaters.