Film review: Mia Goth raises immorality to an art form in Infinity Pool
Mia Goth in Infinity Pool
- Infinity Pool
- ★★★★☆
Set in the fictional country of Li Tolqa, which appears to be somewhere in Central America, (18s) opens with novelist James (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) holidaying at an exclusive ‘compound’ where the natives are held at bay by armed guards and barbed wire.
Invited to take a drive in the countryside by fellow tourists Gabi (Mia Goth) and Alban (Jalil Lespert), James gets drunk, knocks down a local and then speeds away from the scene of the crime. The tourists, of course, are terrified of getting sucked into the legal system of a Third World country, but actually they have no idea of how bad it will get: belatedly arrested, James is informed by Detective Thresh (Zijad Gracic) that the punishment must fit the crime, but that he can, for a considerable fee, nominate a double to be executed in his stead.
Written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, is not for the faint of heart: the so-called ‘doubling tradition’ is merely the jumping off point for the real story, which investigates how far a person will go — how badly they will transgress — once they know that the consequences will rebound on some other poor unfortunate.
Suffering from writer’s block, James is in dire need of inspiration, and Gabi and her cohort of ennui-drenched thrill-seekers are more than happy to egg him on as he sinks deeper and deeper into a brutal debauch.
Skarsgård is excellent as the befuddled author seeking some kind of libertarian epiphany, although it’s Mia Goth, fresh from burning up the screen in the recent , who steals the show as a woman dedicated to raising immorality to an art form.
(cinema release)
