David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds”: intimate homage or confused fiction?
When David Cronenberg talks about death, it’s bound to be a little disturbing. His latest feature, Les Linceuls, released in cinemas on April 30, 2025, once again illustrates this fascination with the body, technology and pain, but this time with a more intimate, personal tone. A film about grief… but with a Cronenberg twist.
Fiction that mirrors reality
The Canadian director makes no secret of the fact: Les Linceuls was born after the death of his wife from cancer. The main character, Karsh (played by Vincent Cassel), is a thinly veiled double of his wife. A bereaved entrepreneur, he creates a start-up, GraveTech, which enables the living to observe the bodies of their departed loved ones via connected graves. A device as chilling as it is poetic. But the story changes when several graves, including his wife’s, are vandalized.
This intriguing starting point leads to an investigation tinged with transhumanism, security paranoia and conspiracy – elements that Cronenberg has mastered, but which, here, upset the emotional balance of the story. We oscillate between the sincere melancholy of a man in mourning and the sometimes abstruse meanderings of an overly cerebral script.
Meticulous staging, but a scattered message
Visually, David Cronenberg remains true to himself: the aesthetic is cold, clinical and uncluttered. The flashback scenes, particularly those in the marital bed, are touching in their chilling tenderness. Diane Kruger, in a double role, and Guy Pearce round out a solid cast, even if the film seems above all to be constructed as a personal outlet for its author.
A divisive and thought-provoking film
Part elegiac body horror, part clumsy techno-thriller, Les Linceuls leaves a strange taste. More cerebral than emotional, more theoretical than visceral. Is this a fine homage or a work too closed in on itself? One thing is certain: David Cronenberg never ceases to explore what obsesses us all – death, absence, the trace.
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