For all his cool detachment, methodical craftsmanship and pitch-black irony, _The Shrouds_ finds the great David Cronenberg at his most heartfelt and, despite having publicly played down the autobiographical nature of this script, at his most personal. Cronenberg's wife passed away in 2017 after a prolonged illness and in Vincent Cassel's Karsh we could perhaps see a Cronenberg cypher, through which the great filmmaker shares his experiences of loss, grief and sexual desire, as well as one's wrestle with impermanence and mortality. Karsh is a businessman in the death business, haunted by his dead wife during sleep and by her twin sister (both played by the beautiful Diane Kruger) in waking life. And through the unfolding conspiracy against Karsh's burgeoning voyeuristic graveyard empire, Cronenberg is able to explore many of his long-held concerns - the intersection of tech and our bodies, the fate of human connection, the environment and, viscerally, the degradation, fetishisation, corruption and fallibility of our corporeal form. Cronenberg, who openly admits he's more influenced by novels than films, takes a very measured, complex and literary approach to the narrative in _The Shrouds_, ending on an emotionally weighted final note, rather than one driven by narrative urgency or interest. We're not afforded the answers to the conspiracy plot in a neatly wrapped package, instead we're offered the haunting realisation that our protagonist will never be unmarked by his wife's death, that every new object of desire will bear his burden and share her scars.