You know how it is. You're on your holidays and you end up chatting to that boring couple at the next table.
However, in Brandon Cronenberg's new body shock thriller Infinity Pool, when failed novelist Paul Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) become friends with a group of overly friendly strangers (including Mia Goth as the mysterious Gaby) on an exotic island, it doesn’t quite end up with a drunken conga line and karaoke to ABBA at 4am in the hotel bar.
Instead, the unsuspecting couple are swept into a demimonde of amorality, strange - very strange - sex and a macabre game that sees them literally dicing with death as a form of voyeurism.
Sure, we all tend to let our hair down on a two-week break in Majorca. That’s the point but Infinity Pool really does test the limits of holiday romance and whether we will make it to the end of the fortnight with our partners.
Review: You'll need a strong stomach for Infinity Pool
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment, Goth says she was drawn to the concept of the film from word go. "I was shocked really by ten pages in when I was reading the script, and I knew pretty immediately that this was something I had to do and had to be part of."
Skarsgård plays the frustrated novelist, who published a failure of a debut novel some years previously and is now wrestling with writer’s block. His relationship with his partner is falling apart and he is hardly the hero of the piece.
"I think James is a little bit of everything because there are many iterations of the guy, a little bit of a hero, a little bit of a villain and everything in between I think," says Skarsgård.
"We find him in a very interesting place when we meet him. He's struggling with his life and his relationship and his career and he’s desperately trying to find some inspiration for his sophomore novel. His first one was written six years ago, it was a failure, and he feels like a failure.
"He’s questioning his own talent so he’s very open when Mia’s character Gaby meets him on the beach and gives him that little compliment. That’s all it takes for him to embark on this crazy adventure because he is desperate for any acknowledgement or appreciation that he will become a hungry dog and will follow Gaby anywhere."
Gaby may appear to be an innocent abroad, but it soon turns out she is quite the femme fatale. It is quite a dark and mischievous role for Goth.
"Very much so and that was part of the appeal in playing Gaby," she says. "Like James, she has many faces to her too. When we are first presented with her, she comes across as quite sweet and unassuming but as the film progresses, we really get to see all her sides and it was a real treat to play."
The movie was written and directed by 43-year-old Brandon Cronenberg, son of maverick director David, and Brandon really is a chip off the old block. Infinity Pool drips with graphic sex, and a vertiginous, lurid direction style but Skarsgård says the son of the father is very much his own man.
"I think he has proven himself to be a very talented director with Infinity Pool. This is his third feature and I had seen both his previous films, Antiviral and Possessor, when I got the script for this film, and I thought they were both deeply disturbing, so haunting and clearly directed by someone with so much talent. I was beyond excited to jump into the deep end with Brandon on this one."
Maybe it’s her surname but Mia Goth has quickly carved out a niche for herself in movies like Pearl, The Secret of Marrowbone, Nymphomaniac, and the 2018 remake of Suspiria but she rejects any suggestion that she is the go-too actress for horror and psychological thrillers.
"Not particularly. I'm drawn to directors, and I love filmmakers so that’s one part of a number of things I take into account when I decide to take a role," she says.
"The projects you mentioned just happen to be by people I've long admired and they just felt right to do at the time, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I'm drawn to one type of role over another."
Asked to sum up the theme of Infinity Pool, Skarsgård says, "It’s about facing your own mortality. Literally."
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
Infinity Pool is in cinemas on Friday
