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David Cronenberg, the body horror pioneer behind “The Fly,” “Videodrome” and “Crimes of the Future,” has made a career exploring the intersection of physicality and technology. He is a daring auteur unafraid to explore unusual, grotesque forms of human desire and obsession.

Cronenberg’s latest film, “The Shrouds,” is perhaps his most personal work to date, offering a vision of the near future where pursuits of technological innovation and sexual pleasure are coping mechanisms for grief. Cronenberg offers viewers a glimpse into his soul and the suffering he cannot escape after losing his wife, film editor Carolyn Ziefman, to cancer.

Where taboo forms of body modification or gratification are a motif throughout Cronenberg’s work, “The Shrouds” is defined by the absence of a body. Following the title sequence of particles gradually forming the shape of a woman’s body, the first scene depicts protagonist Karsh (Vincent Cassel) staring at the naked corpse of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) and screaming in agony. We see in these opening moments how the death of his wife haunts the entire film.

Karsh channels his grief into his company, GraveTech, and the invention of high-tech burial shrouds allowing for a new way to see death. When the dead are buried in GraveTech’s graveyards, they are wrapped in Shrouds, which produce high-quality three-dimensional scans of their remains. The bodies can be viewed on computer screens built into their graves or from the GraveTech app, which Karsh brags about on a date four years after Becca’s death.

Karsh dedicates himself to his morbid, perverse work as a survival mechanism, since having a scan of Becca’s skeleton on his phone is the only way he can hold onto her. He expresses pain over not being able to lay beside Becca in death underground, building a second screen into her grave in anticipation of his future death and burial.

Having devoted himself to preserving the image of his wife, Karsh is bewildered when several GraveTech graves, including Becca’s, are mysteriously desecrated in the middle of the night. Later, Karsh notices strange markings lining Becca’s bones in his 3D scans.

He wonders how these markings are connected to the gravesite desecration or if the vandals were trying to cover something up. Karsh’s grief soon manifests as paranoia over the nature of his wife’s remains, the “cause” of her death and the possibility that she had an affair with one of her doctors.

Karsh descends into a heartbreaking rabbit hole where the film raises more questions than answers. Even as the mystery expands into espionage over the international security implications of Shroud’s technology, Karsh and the audience can never escape Becca’s image.

In a Q&A session after a screening of “The Shrouds” at the New York Film Festival, Cronenberg spoke about his interest in the conspiratorial side of grief.

“The death of a loved one is completely A) impossible, and B) meaningless. These are two things (that are) very difficult to accept,” Cronenberg said.

To assign meaning to death, he said, grieving people may convince themselves that something must have happened. Maybe their partner died because of doctors, hospitals or secret love affairs.

Cronenberg said losing a partner also creates personal guilt, feeling as though someone has not “said what should’ve been said.” The impulse to blame other things for death, even oneself, is embodied through Karsh’s paranoia and obsession over Becca’s body.

The image of his wife haunts Karsh in his daily interactions. He is close with Becca’s sister, Terry, also played by Kruger, who believes the doctors were experimenting on Becca in her dying moments. Terry’s identical resemblance to Becca, and Becca’s insistence that Karsh not go for Terry after her death, create strange sexual tensions in their relationship — a push and pull of uncomfortable desires.

Becca’s image is recreated as Karsh’s AI assistant, a 3D computer avatar named Hunny (voiced by Kruger). Hunny is initially a source of comfort and security for Karsh, scheduling meetings for him and cracking jokes to entertain him.

Though comedic in how hideous this avatar appears, Hunny’s sensual vocal tones and uncanny bodily movements give her an eerie presence. Cronenberg’s depiction of a virtual assistant, which resembles a dead loved one, mirrors our growing dependence on technologies like AI, for conducting business and serving our emotional needs.

Hunny is a small representation of the film’s dynamic tone, shifting between funny and creepy and intimate on a moment’s notice. “The Shrouds” contains some of the funniest scenes of the year and some of the saddest, particularly its flashbacks to Karsh and Becca’s life right before she died. In the same film where Hunny turns into an animal for several scenes, horrifying moments of physical degradation from cancer play out with visceral sound effects.

Cronenberg captures the full range of human emotions that arise in grief, from tragedy to levity. His tonal shifts can be sudden, but never ineffective.

Accentuating the personal nature of “The Shrouds,” Karsh takes on a physical resemblance to Cronenberg and is similarly devoted to bodies and technology. Cassel, the “La Haine” and “Ocean’s Twelve” actor known for his tough-guy roles, excels as a manifestation of Cronenberg. He is unafraid to look confused, pathetic and despondent, always finding a way to center his character’s grief in an empathetic way.

Kruger, too, is outstanding in her threefold performance. She successfully distinguishes between Becca, Terry and Hunny while also playing into their innate physical similarities, contributing to the beautiful and haunting presence Karsh’s wife holds over him.

“The Shrouds” takes place in a bizarre near-future where characters speak bluntly about their desires and machinations, with bouts of exposition that may be frustrating to follow. Cronenberg’s writing is often ridiculous; this is a world where Karsh’s dentist emails him X-rays of Becca’s teeth with a poetic message about comfort within grief attached.

Once you accept the journey Cronenberg takes you on, you will experience a provocative, funny and moving meditation on grief that only he could make.

“The Shrouds” will continue to screen as part of the 2024 New York Film Festival. Sideshow and Janus Films will release it in the spring.

Published on October 8, 2024 at 10:49 pm