An infinity pool is an optical illusion, a very expensive pool built such that you can’t see the edge of the water while you’re in the pool. It just looks like it’s hanging there in space. It’s only when you get up close that you realize your eyes were deceiving you. It’s the central metaphor for the very interesting and well-directed INFINITY POOL, by Brandon Cronenberg.
Foster and his wife Em(-ily? -ma?)are celebrating an unhappy rich/poor marriage with a trip to Li Tolqa, a charmingly terrifying and thankfully fictional tropical island with some interesting cultural quirks. First off, Cronenberg hired a linguist to create a rudimentary fake language for Li Tolqa, and I’m a complete sucker for that sort of thing. Secondly, apparently almost every crime committed on the island has the death penalty, so, don’t go wandering. Thirdly, this Third World dump also, somehow, has the technology to perfectly clone you, complete with your memories, so that the very rich who do commit crimes can purchase a “surrogate” to be executed in their stead, provided that they watch it happen. (Not sure if this is meant to be “20 minutes in the future” or if it’s just a parallel now where this kind of technological breakthrough is taken as a given.) After meeting another vacationing couple giving off nuclear swinger vibes, the four go off on a drunken joy ride, and James ends up flattening a local under the wheels of their car. The police arrest him and the aforementioned offer is made, and accepted, and soon James and Em are watching another James being stabbed to death by the victim’s eldest son.
Now, I THOUGHT at this point the movie was going to go in a “we executed the wrong James” direction, and we’d start questioning if he was real or the double. But it doesn’t. Instead, a curious little smile crosses James’ face, and we start to realize that he enjoyed it. Seeing a man murdered, seeing himself murdered, has unlocked something inside him. Something which was unleashed in their companions a long time ago. James has been scouted by a group of, well, “murder tourists,” very rich people who visit Li Tolqa regularly to kill and to watch themselves BE killed. And by the time James realizes his infinity pool is just an illusion, he’s already walked out over the edge.
This is my first time watching a film by Cronenberg the Younger and I’m excited to see the rest now. It’s not perfect, the main character sometimes comes across as unfinished rather than conflicted, but Mia Goth is great here, managing to be creepy and seductive all at once. Her Gabi comes across as a normal woman who indulges herself – rewards herself, even – in utter inhumanity a few weeks a year and suffers not one bit of regret over it, almost as if she’s taking a vacation from her own morality. Or maybe her morality is just another illusion. For her performance alone, INFINITY POOL is definitely worth wading into.
