Appearances can, indeed, be deceptive.

Arriving on set at 7am for the penultimate day of an eight-and-a-half week shoot, Total Film’s enjoyment of the stone promenade, plantain trees and smooth, expansive lake has already been painfully interrupted by some sort of flying spiderbug.

Looking like something out of an early Cronenberg movie, or perhaps Naked Lunch, it went straight for the neck and took a deep draught just moments after the PR’s offer of a can of insect-repellant had been politely declined.

Cronenberg, who introduces himself with a modest “Hi, I’m David, the director”, chuckles at the anecdote. He, more than most, knows of the chaos and ugliness that seethe beneath composed surfaces – just look at the coolly lensed Crash or the fake family-man existence lived by Viggo Mortensen’s savage protagonist in A History Of Violence.