Aubrey Plaza in ‘The White Lotus’ season 2. Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO.
The actual plotline for the season remains unknown for now, but if past seasons are anything to go by, it’ll once more see the clientele of a White Lotus resort (this time with Château de La Messardière in Saint-Tropez, France rumored as a main location) dealing with issues of wealth, privilege, dysfunction and, of course, probably a death or two.
Walton Goggins in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3. Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO.
Helena Bonham Carter and Kumail Nanjiani are among the ‘White Lotus’ Season 4 cast.
Chris Messina, Max Greenfield and more will also show up.
The new series will be set at a French resort.
From the start, creator/showrunner Mike White has been able to command an eclectic, often starry cast for HBO series ‘The White Lotus,’ which spins a murder mystery each season at a different resort from the titular fictional chain.
Michelle Monaghan in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3. Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO.
The actual plotline for the season remains a mystery for now, but if past seasons are anything to go by, it’ll once more see the clientele of a White Lotus resort (this time reportedly in France) rocked by a suspicious death or two.
With White writing and directing as always, the season will be shooting this year.
(L to R) Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sarah Catherine Hook, and Sam Nivola in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3. Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO.
(L to R) Vincent Cassel and Sandrine Holt in ‘The Shrouds’. Photo: Sideshow and Janus Films 5.
Just as his 1979 horror classic ‘The Brood’ was partially the director’s outpouring of anger and frustration over a bitter divorce and custody battle, David Cronenberg’s latest movie, ‘The Shrouds,’ unleashes a torrent of grief – well, sort of — over the death of Cronenberg’s second wife, Carolyn Zeifman, who died in 2017 after 38 years of marriage. But while ‘The Brood’ embodied Cronenberg’s rage in the form of mutant children borne from a psychologically unstable spouse, ‘The Shrouds’ finds Cronenberg getting more personal than usual as only he can: with a chilly, dry-humored, eerie, and occasionally cringe-inducing meditation on death, loss, and, as one character says, “money, technology, politics, and religion.”
All four of those come into play over the course of Cronenberg’s slow-burn, almost excessively talky, but still provocative new film (his 23rd). While ‘The Shrouds’ offers up a late-career remix of a number of Cronenberg’s greatest hits – body horror, paranoia, the fusion of technology and flesh, and soulless corporate greed – it does so through a more intimate lens than usual. And even if it doesn’t all add up in the end, ‘The Shrouds’ is still an occasionally heady meditation on how we deal with mortality — and how we decide not to deal with it.
Story and Direction
‘The Shrouds’ director David Cronenberg. Photo: Caitlin Cronenberg.
With his spiky white hair, craggy face, and black sunglasses, Vincent Cassel’s Karsh Relikh (continuing a long tradition of Cronenberg protagonists with weird names) is a – pardon the expression – dead ringer for the director himself, making the film’s unsettling blurring of reality and fantasy even more obscured. A producer of “industrial videos” based in Toronto, Karsh is also the founder and owner of GraveTech, a new technology which allows the living to watch the decomposing bodies of their loved ones via a live feed from the radioactive wrapping (the “shroud”) placed around the body in its grave.
One can watch this decidedly morbid display on either the handy phone app or via a screen mounted directly on the deceased’s headstone in Karsh’s special cemetery, which is located directly behind an austere restaurant he also owns. For Karsh, GraveTech is more than a business: he has a feed directly into the grave of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger), watching her skeletal remains four years after her death even as she comes into him in dreams, pieces of her body missing from the cancer that ravaged her body.
Things begin to go off the rails for Karsh when the GraveTech cemetery is vandalized – including the grave of his wife – just as he is formulating plans to expand the franchise with an enigmatic European investor and his equally mysterious but alluring wife (Sandrine Holt). At the same time, Karsh engages in a dangerous sexual relationship with his wife’s twin sister, Terry (also Kruger), even as Terry’s ex-husband, the nerdy, unstable Maury (Guy Pearce) tries to help him figure out who’s hacking into GraveTech and who attacked the cemetery.
‘The Shrouds’. Photo: Sideshow and Janus Films 5.
Set in a slightly surreal world that’s just a few minutes in the future from ours (with self-driving cars and A.I. assistants a prominent but accepted part of everyday life), ‘The Shrouds’ follows a very Cronenbergian template of presenting the viewer with several puzzling questions that are not necessarily answered by the end of the film. This – and the movie’s somewhat emotionally removed, cerebral, dialogue-heavy script – can be off-putting to novice viewers but are familiar aspects to longtime fans of this one-of-a-kind filmmaker.
Yet Cronenberg possibly takes it a step further this time: as his mental state seems to crumble and the lines of reality blur, the movie itself almost seems to decompose along with the bodies of the dead that Karsh’s GraveTech allows us to view. The structure of the film decays just like a corpse, leaving Karsh on a voyage to destinations unknown by the time the film ends.
All this is done with Cronenberg’s typical precision and flair, with not a shot or composition wasted and the stark world of the movie painted in lustrous black, gray, and chocolate tones. Although minimal compared to much of his early work, the traces of body horror here are as always uncomfortable and unsettling. If we had to quibble with anything, it’s a little disappointing that the images delivered via GraveTech seem more digital in nature than realistic – the corpses look more like AI-generated images than actual bodies.
Cast and Performances
(L to R) Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger in ‘The Shrouds’. Photo: Sideshow and Janus Films 5.
Vincent Cassel has always been more of a character actor than a leading man, but he acquits himself well here as Karsh, a man with the financial and technological means to assuage his grief but not the emotional or psychological tools. His reserved demeanor makes Karsh difficult to access at first, but Cassel eventually and subtly expresses his anguish even if his methods of expressing it – like having sex with his dead wife’s sister – aren’t exactly empathetic.
Equally knotty is Guy Pearce as the sister’s ex-wife, Maury, who lives inside his own head when he’s not buried in a laptop screen. Maury is hopelessly awkward, socially inept, and both smart enough to connect certain dots yet naïve enough to allow himself to be played.
But the MVP of the film is without a doubt Diane Kruger, in not one, two, but three roles: she plays Becca, Karsh’s late wife, who’s glimpsed in flashbacks and dreams as cancer and surgery ravage and take apart her body; she’s also Terry, Becca’s more neurotic sister, who gets enmeshed in a strange, powerful attraction with Karsh that turns physical and blurs the lines of identity; and finally she is the voice of Hunny, Karsh’s initially helpful A.I. assistant who slowly turns more controlling and malevolent as Karsh’s paranoia becomes more entrenched. Kruger has been rather underrated throughout her career, but here she plays three distinct personalities in three very different forms of existence, yet somehow manages to make a psychological throughline for all three.
Final Thoughts
Vincent Cassel in ‘The Shrouds’. Photo: Sideshow and Janus Films 5.
Despite its morbid subject matter, ‘The Shrouds’ is not a return to the all-out horror assault of early Cronenberg classics like ‘Shivers,’ ‘Scanners,’ or ‘The Fly.’ But it shares many themes that manifest through all of the director’s work, and in many ways should be catnip to his most devout fans. The limitations of the flesh, the creeping grip of technology over our lives and even souls, the hint of vast conspiracies happening just beyond our range of vision – they’re all here, filtered through a more personal lens than usual, yet suffused with Cronenberg’s trademark sense of mounting unease and seasoned with his deadpan humor, dry as the dust inside a coffin.
It doesn’t always make sense, and it may not end up in a place that feels completely satisfying, but ‘The Shrouds’ is still a thoughtful if sometimes ponderous examination of grief and paranoia in which you’re never quite sure what’s about to happen next…which sounds a lot like life itself.
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What is the plot of ‘The Shrouds’?
Following the death of his wife, a tech entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassel) develops a technology that allows people to view the bodies of their departed loved ones as they decay in their graves. But Karsh’s plans for expansion are challenged by personal demons, vandalism, and a possible conspiracy.
Who is in the cast of ‘The Shrouds’?
Vincent Cassel as Karsh Relikh
Diane Kruger as Becca / Terry / Hunny
Guy Pearce as Maury
Sandrine Holt as Soo-Min Szabo
Elizabeth Saunders as Gray Foner
Jennifer Dale as Myrna Slotnik
Eric Weinthal as Dr. Hofstra
Jeff Yung as Dr. Rory Zhao
‘The Shrouds’ opens in theaters on April 18th. Photo: Sideshow and Janus Films 5.
Premiering on Apple TV+ beginning February 24th is the new six-episode British-French television series ‘Liaison,’ which was directed by Stephen Hopkins (‘Predator 2,’ ‘Blown Away’).
What is the plot of ‘Liaison?’
In ‘Liaison,’ after a series of suspected cyber-attacks target London and the Thames barrier is breached, the capital to flood. Alison Rowdy (Eva Green), private secretary to the Minister for Security at the Home Office, is leading the government’s response. But when another attack hits the rail network, a suspect emerges in mercenary Gabriel Delage (Vincent Cassel), an operative hired by a French company to locate two Syrian hackers and retrieve the vital information they hold.
Gabriel also happens to have been Alison’s former lover, which is further complicated by the fact that Alison’s fiancé, Albert (Daniel Francis), a barrister who is unaware of their history together and has been tasked with revoking Gabriel’s diplomatic immunity and arresting him on UK soil. Now, Gabriel and Alison must work together and race against the clock, and across borders to uncover the conspiracy and stop another attack. But along the way, their past together threatens their future as Alison’s loyalties are tested, both to her fiancé, to her country and to herself.
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Vincent Cassel about his work on ‘Liaison,’ playing a mercenary, Alison and Gabriel’s relationship, and why he’s always wanted to work with Eva Green.
Vincent Cassel stars in Apple TV+’s ‘Liaison.’
You can read the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interview with Vincent Cassel.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your approach to playing Gabriel and how you were able to get inside the head of a mercenary?
Vincent Cassel: Well, first of all, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet up with some of the guys who are actually mercenaries in real life. Above the information that they gave me, even though I’m not quite sure they told me the truth about everything, I was able to scan the way they would carry themselves and the way they behave.
What really struck me about at least two of them is that they were very dark, lonely, and cynical. But at the same time, they were lighthearted and able to cope with the reality they’ve seen behind the curtain because they worked with literally all the secret services in the world. They had this way of not taking anything seriously.
I really wanted the character to come across as very European in that sense. Meaning that of course he has the sense of his responsibility, he’s a very reliable agent, but you can feel that, even life itself, he doesn’t take it so seriously. The only thing that really is a problem for him is his relationship with Allison.
(L to R) Vincent Cassel and Eva Green in ‘Liaison,’ streaming on Apple TV+.
MF: Can you talk about Gabriel and Alison’s relationship, the past they share, and the events that bring them back together in this series?
VC: Well, those two were not supposed to meet again, even though there was this really strong attraction and actually even love between them. They’ve been deceived by one another in a way that there was no way they would meet again. She grew up, she became something else. He stayed the way he was, except that now time has passed and he’s tired of the life he’s had. But because of this professional situation, they have to work together and I think that becomes a pretext and an excuse to carry along with their love story.
Eva Green in ‘Liaison,’ streaming on Apple TV+.
MF: Finally, what was it like working with Eva Green on this series?
VC: Well, listen, I’ve been fascinated by this actress forever, since I saw her in ‘The Dreamers.’ I think that was her first movie, actually, and I always thought that she was totally unique in particular, and there was no other actress really, that carries that mystery and that elegance. So I told her, of course, and I think we were really curious, one for another, and she’s very instinctive, and I’m kind of like that as an actor. So when we got on set, there was not much to be talked about. We were just having fun together.
Vincent Cassel in ‘Liaison,’ streaming on Apple TV+.
Alicia Vikander is on one of those classic Hollywood rolls right now, from “Ex Machina” to “The Danish Girl” (plus “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”), and now she’s co-starring in the return of Matt Damon‘s Jason Bourne. The next Bourne movie, still just known as “Bourne 5” until someone tells us the official title, is coming out this July, and the Swedish actress recently talked to TheWrap about her role.
TheWrap asked if she’d be hanging from harnesses or jumping out of airplanes or what. Alicia carefully answered, “I’m not doing the conventional action, but I’m very action-driven in this film. But it’s not in the way most people would think.” How would you interpret that? Action-driven, but not conventional action, so maybe no traditional stunts but something … more intellectual, which would be fitting for the Bourne world? Guessing at this point.
Alicia compared the challenges of working on smaller films vs. the giant blockbuster of a Bourne movie.
“I came from Sweden where it’s like 30, 40 people, and here on ‘The Danish Girl,’ doing a British film, it’s 100, and then you end up on these [Bourne] sets — and I know on Monday or Tuesday we’re going to have 1,600 extras just in one scene. And just to see how the machinery works is incredible. So we’ve been to several countries in Europe and we’ve been to D.C. now — which is the first time for me, a few weeks ago — and now we’re in Vegas, which is a very special experience.”
She said, at the point of this interview, they had been in Las Vegas for 1.5 weeks and had a few more weeks to go.
Alicia said she knew Vincent Cassel, who also stars in the “Bourne” sequel, saying “he’s pretty badass” in the movie. But she did not know Matt Damon until this film. “I hadn’t met Matt, I was just the biggest fan. […] He’s very funny on set and then he’s just extremely cool as Bourne, but we all know that.”
She shared the story of being on set in a casino and not realizing there were cameras around her because there’s already so much going on in a casino, and she saw that people weren’t even recognizing Matt, perhaps because he had his cap down tight on his head to be “hiding in plain sight.” She joked that she might borrow a hat from Matt to do that in the future, if she needs to.
Watch the full “Bourne” talk:
Are you excited for this movie? It is scheduled to open July 29, 2016. Here’s a bit more about the film from Matt Damon and company.
When we first saw the trailer for “Child 44,” we commented on Tom Hardy‘s amazing Russian accent and the fact that a Soviet-era thriller, especially in today’s turbulent political climate, could be really, really cool. Well, we are here to debut the brand new poster for the film (opening on April 17th), which reinforces the movie’s fertile setting while paying homage to stylized Soviet propaganda. It’s a really great poster.
“Child 44,” which costars Vincent Cassel, Noomi Rapace, and Gary Oldman, is based on Tom Rob Smith’s best-selling historical novel of the same name and was, in turn, based on a series of real-life child murders committed by a man dubbed the Red Ripper (he claimed to have killed over 50 women and children). What makes the story even more compelling, of course, is that it was committed during Stalin’s reign in Russia, a supposedly perfect Communist state free of messy complications like serial murders.
This poster really captures the feeling of Soviet-era Russia, with its stark design and giant star, evoking the propaganda posters from the same period, a stylization that has been evoked many times ever since, from other movie posters like “V for Vendetta” to things like Franz Ferdinand album covers. The poster goes a long way in establishing the mood and tone of “Child 44” and the time period when it’s set, complete with an eerie tagline: “Those who seek truth will be silenced.” Now that is moody. %Slideshow-266096%
Tom Hardy has never met a funny accent that he hasn’t fallen wildly in love with. His latest is a gruff Russian number for “Child 44,” a new film based on Tom Rob Smith’s best-selling historical thriller that follows a former secret policeman (Hardy) who is investigating a series of grisly child murders in Soviet Russia. And you can hear that accent and see Hardy in action in the gripping new trailer.
“Child 44” is based, in part, on a real life serial killer dubbed the Red Ripper who murdered more than 50 women and children in Stalin’s supposedly perfect Russia. Hardy plays a man who is clued into the killer after a friend’s child is murdered. This looks really intense. The all-star supporting cast includes Gary Oldman (Batman reunion!), Joel Kinnaman, Vincent Cassel (glimpsed briefly in the trailer), Paddy Considine, Jason Clarke, Noomi Rapace (re-teaming with Hardy after “The Drop”) and Dev Patel. It was directed by Chilean-Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa (“Safe House”) and adapted by the great Richard Price, a stellar novelist in his own right. Soviet Russia is a fascinating place to set any kind of movie, but a hardboiled thriller like this seems downright perfect.
Should the movie prove successful, it could be a rare franchise for adults, since the Hardy character took center stage in two more books written by Smith (“The Secret Speech” and “Agent 6”). We’ll all find out when “Child 44” opens on April 17th.
When we first saw the trailer for “
Tom Hardy has never met a funny accent that he hasn’t fallen wildly in love with. His latest is a gruff Russian number for “Child 44,” a new film based on Tom Rob Smith’s best-selling historical thriller that follows a former secret policeman (Hardy) who is investigating a series of grisly child murders in Soviet Russia. And you can hear that accent and see Hardy in action in the gripping new trailer.