The David Cronenberg movie Charli XCX hasn’t “been able to stop thinking about”
It’s easy to see Charli XCX as nothing more than a vacuous pop star who revels in doing a little line, partying all day and all night, and simply ‘living that life’, but within her busy touring schedule, she somehow finds the time to watch a lot of movies.
This was revealed to fans when she started posting about the films she was watching on Letterboxd, using TikTok to discuss her favourites and share recommendations. Coinciding with her new avenue as an actor, this might seem, on the surface, like a bit of a PR move, simply inspiring fans to take her new endeavours seriously. But you can’t deny the fact that Charli has good taste.
It was only a matter of time, then, before she ended up in the Criterion Closet picking out movies that she loves, and after highlighting her love of French classics like the magical three-hour Céline and Julie Go Boating and the beautiful Italian La Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni, she then picked out a David Cronenberg movie, revealing a taste for the slightly more grotesque.
Pioneering the body horror genre back in the 1970s, the Canadian filmmaker is one of the most influential directors of his generation, having pushed the limits of the way the body is displayed on screen, and how far we can go before a vision of mortality and corporeality is twisted into something beyond comprehension.
Cronenberg has made many big hits over the years, from The Fly and Videodrome to his controversial piece of car accident erotica, Crash, and he’s showing no signs of stopping. The filmmaker might be in his ‘80s, but he’s still finding new ways of bringing his often rather abject and confronting ideas to the screen.
His most recent film, 2024’s The Shrouds, made it into XCX’s Criterion Closet video, with the singer revealing her fascination with the filmmaker’s unique body horror take on grief. Cronenberg penned the film following the death of his wife, exploring a bizarre technology in which the image of the deceased’s decomposing corpse is displayed on their tombstone.
Leading the film is Vincent Cassel as widower Karsh, who invents this strange GraveTech. It received pretty positive reviews from critics, with the movie nominated for the Palme d’Or, although it was Anora which took home the prize instead. Still, it’s a film that, when XCX first saw it, she was taken aback, and she couldn’t shake it from her mind.
“I’m a big Cronenberg stan,” the singer explained, “I was on tour when I saw this film. I kind of like to watch films to escape how repetitive life on the road is. And I will say that when I first saw this film, I was left pretty confused, and I didn’t really know what I thought of it. And then I realised, since I saw the film, I think I saw it in May, I kind of haven’t been able to stop thinking about this film.”
Sticking true to the title of her song ‘I think about it all the time’, XCX detailed just what makes The Shrouds stick in her mind. “I think about it every week. I feel like I discover a new feeling post-watching this film. I think about GraveTech, I think about Hunny, the AI assistant. I think about Vincent Cassel’s character’s Japanese-style apartment in the high-rise building in Toronto. I think the details in this movie are really quite something, and I also think it’s very funny.”
