King Of The Cruise

“not short on style, although crucially never at the cost of its humanity.” (The Film Stage)

Long, long ago in 2019 cruise ships used to ply the earth’s oceans. Many of these ships carried bloated or wizened old Americans who sought a place to exercise their false jollity. On such a ship cruising in the Caribbean, you may meet Ronnie Reisinger, who will tell you over cocktails that he is a Scottish nobleman, Baron Inneryne. Given his American accent this seems improbable, but you meet the darnedest people on these cruises. A first glance, this Dutch doco seems a comic voyage into the grotesque, but the more you learn about Ronnie, the more he emerges as a figure of pathos and tragedy, adrift on a sea of obesity and loneliness. Sophie Dros, who has made films in the past about men with sex doll fixations and man-boobs, is interested in testing and extending the bounds of our capacity for sympathy. Finally, this is a film that demands enormous compassion from us, for what is compassion but the embrace of humanity in spite of its imperfections, and perhaps because of its imperfections.