OFFICIAL SELECTION - IN COMPETITION

Canadian director David Cronenberg, 81, known for his explorations of the limits and unexpected transformations of flesh in films such as Videodrome, The Fly and Crash, unveiled his final feature film at the Cannes Film Festival, marking the beginning of the second week of competition. The subject of The Shrouds is the loss of a loved one, a devilishly romantic theme that the filmmaker carefully avoids turning into a poetic or dramatic outpouring. As usual, he approaches it through the chilling lens of technological anticipation, examining how it can reshape the relationship between the human body and the machine.

The film was written following the death of Carolyn Cronenberg, the filmmaker's wife and collaborator, in 2017. This bereavement, rather than offering a key to understanding, gives the film a very personal tone and highlights the deep emotion that runs through it.

So personal that Vincent Cassel, 17 years after Eastern Promises (2007), portrays a hero who, with his slender figure and silver mane, resembles Cronenberg almost to a tee. Karsh, a wealthy Toronto entrepreneur with a high-tech funeral business, can't get over the death of his wife, Rebecca (Diane Kruger). As a result, he has developed a connected grave system, which he markets in his network of equipped cemeteries. At the heart of this technology is a sensor-equipped shroud that takes an image of the buried body and transmits it to a screen embedded into the gravestone. Consequently, the inconsolable engineer can follow the day-to-day decomposition of the beloved corpse. Their relationship continues beyond death, as the body continues to transform. However, Karsh soon observes the formation of strange nodules on the skeleton's surface, raising concerns about the body's integrity.

This twisted yet stimulating premise, probing the Promethean theme of impossible mourning and necrophilic desire, is intertwined with another paranoid plot. One morning, Karsh discovers that several of his tombs, including his wife's, have not only been vandalized but hacked into and converted into a surveillance system. The investigation leads him to uncover a dark cybernetic conspiracy involving conflicting interests (a rival oncologist or environmental activists opposed to his technological innovations), and possibly foreign powers (China? Russia?). Every step he takes brings him back to the same central enigma: Rebecca's troubled personality, filled with many dark areas.

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