Cronenberg attacks criticism of his film about grief: “They haven't understood anything”

David Cronenberg has joined the list of established veterans who are receiving blows at the Cannes festival. After Coppola and Schrader, critics have also raved about the new proposal from the Canadian filmmaker, who is competing for the seventh time for a Palme d’Or that eludes him with The shrouds, a disturbing story about the pain that caused the death of his wife seven years ago.

At that moment he thought he was not going to get behind the camera anymore, but he has invested that anguish in telling a dark story about a widower who launches an app with cameras in the coffins so that clients can see how their loved ones are doing. decompose ”I have read some ignorant and stupid reviews that focused on paranoia. They have not understood the film at all, the idea of ​​pain. “Paranoia is a strategy to deal with the pain of the death of someone you love,” he commented, visibly upset during the press conference. The last time he attended the contest was in 2022 with Crimes of the Future, which he also did not receive the reception he expected.

In the film, Karsh (Vincent Cassel) cannot get over the death of his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger). He is the owner of the cemetery in which she is buried and where she has implemented her high-tech system, which is raided by a gang of vandals in the dead of night. His obsession leads him to begin to build a series of conspiracy theories about the treatment that his sick woman suffered in the hospital and in this he implicates the deceased’s twin sister.

The Frenchman Cassel admits that “some shots are disturbing” and that “the film is like a dream or a nightmare.” According to him, “each person has their own way of dealing with pain and the loss of a loved one, it seems crazy to reach those limits, but they are the things we do when we cannot deal with reality.” For her part, Kruger stated: “I think that any film you make takes you to places where you are not so comfortable, in this case, being invited to something so intimate, about death and pain, made me think about my own mortality”.