Reviews: THE SHROUDS and FRIENDSHIP

 by Rob DiCristino

A 'People Are Strange' double feature.

The Shrouds (Dir. David Cronenberg)

People deal with grief in different ways. Some push their feelings down, hoping that what they can’t see won’t hurt them. Others let their feelings consume them, descending into a well of emotional catastrophe from which they never recover. Then there are the rare few, like psycho-sexual body horror virtuoso David Cronenberg, for example, whose only road to recovery leads through artistic creation. Inspired by the tragic death of his wife in 2017, Cronenberg’s excellent new film examines grief in exactly the manner you’d expect from the director of The Fly and Videodrome: It’s an icy rumination on our relationships with those we’ve lost, a post-mortem examination of the blood and sinew that make up their bodies, and a complex plot of international conspiracy in which shadowy forces weaponize those bodies for profit. While some find comfort in reliving warm memories or reflecting on shared experiences, it’s clear that The Shrouds’ cold, sterile, and distant approach to mourning is exactly what Cronenberg needed to find peace during a very personal crisis.

Karsh (Vincent Cassel, styled like Cronenberg to remove any ambiguity about the director’s intention) is a businessman mourning the death of his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger, thoroughly femmed and fataled). Like all repressed overachievers, Karsh has taken a maximalist approach to his grief, investing the profits from his ventures into GraveTech, an interactive internment and memorial experience that allows a dearly departed’s survivors — incredibly wealthy survivors, if Karsh’s clientele of tycoons is any indication — to access a live feed of their decaying corpse on demand. Using proprietary technology to create a 3D image of the bodies, GraveTech provides the kind of eternal companionship that only characters in a David Cronenberg movie would ever want. However, the app also collects personal data from its users, making it a target for foreign hackers, industry rivals, and activists who object to this commodification of the dead. Haunted by visions of Becca, Karsh searches for some kind of solace while protecting his business from these attackers.

It’s more than a little convoluted by the end, but parsing The Shrouds’ plot mechanics isn’t really the point. Cronenberg is about as interested in story coherence as he is in technological design, and his real aim is to illustrate how Karsh’s grief gives way to insecurity: Did he and Becca really love each other, or is he just romanticizing things? Should he have married her sister (also Kruger), ex-wife of business partner Maury (Guy Pearce, straight off the set of Iron Man 3)? Most importantly: If Becca is gone, how can Karsh ever be sure of the answers to these questions? Crafting a conspiracy of Chinese hackers, Becca’s oncologist and ex-boyfriend (Steve Switzman), and Karsh’s AI assistant (Kruger again as the voice of Hunny) is just how Cronenberg works through these anxieties, and while he leaves a few loose ends — your guess on GraveTech’s fate is as good as mine — that lack of catharsis is intentional: Karsh is still running from his grief. He’s intellectualizing it, fetishizing it, operationalizing it. But until he turns his search for relief inward, he’ll be cursed to watch Becca rot for all eternity.

The Shrouds comes to select U.S. theaters on Friday, April 25th.

Friendship (Dir. Andrew DeYoung)

Have you ever noticed how everything is dumb and nothing makes any sense? Craig Waterman (Tim Robinson) has. A suburban father, husband, and mid-level executive at a marketing firm whose mission is to make products more addictive, Craig scrapes at the edges of Normal American Existence but can’t seem to find any purchase. No one really likes Craig, honestly. His wife (Kate Mara) and teenage son (Jack Dylan Grazer) ignore him. His coworkers talk shit on him behind his back. He hasn’t seen the newest Marvel movie, and his only real goal is conquering the “Seal Team Six Special,” a high-calorie buffet at his favorite dive bar. In short, Craig sucks. But when local TV weatherman and maximum chiller Austin Carmichael (Paul Rudd) moves in down the street, Craig sees an opportunity to remake himself in Austin’s image, to finally develop a real friendship and rediscover the joie de vivre he’s buried under layers of sensible beige office wear. But when Austin rejects him, Craig begins a downward spiral that shatters what little illusion of “normalcy” he had left.

A feature-length I Think You Should Leave sketch hung on the bones of an I Love You, Man-style bromance comedy — complete with Paul Rudd, for good measure — Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is a big-screen carnival of cringe hand-made for Tim Robinson’s most ardent fans. Trading the manchild improv Apatow model for a puttering A24 energy better suited for what the internet tells me we’re now calling “anti-humor,” the film mines laughs from Robinson’s signature failure to mask the lizard-brained freak inside us all, the one that rebels against the performance and insincerity of our shared civilization. Craig’s struggle to fit in with the boys — or with his wife, his son, his boss, the mayor, and everyone else he encounters across Friendship’s ninety minutes — compels us relive own social faux pas, the nuggets of shudder-inducing embarrassment we’ve exiled to the darkest corners of our memories. Craig may be a wretched, off-putting human disaster, but his disintegration really exposes how much fakery and self-deception the rest of us use just to seem “normal.”

Friendship is predictably heavy on bits and sketches, the best of which employ Tim Robinson’s seething rage as a plea for connection and understanding in the face of the absurd. Craig’s greatest flaw is his honesty, and the pathos DeYoung’s screenplay grants him is rooted in the contradictions that honesty provokes. But is Friendship funny? Well, as with most comedies, that really depends on you. Its two best gags — one being perhaps the funniest use of Subway in any movie — are crisp and succinct, whereas the less-successful ones are repetitive and formless. Friendship ultimately fails what I call the “twenty percent test”: It needs to be twenty percent weirder, smarter, or better structured to meet its potential. Robinson never gets an opportunity to truly uncork his madness, and DeYoung flirts with directorial flourishes that should have been approached with more gusto. But again, your mileage will vary! Even if its premise — and lead — are stretched thin by the end, Friendship has enough on its mind to justify the large swaths that don’t quite add up.

Friendship hits U.S. theaters on Friday, May 9th.