BONES AND ALL |
★★★★★
24 November 2022
A movie review of BONES AND ALL.
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Director: Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, A Bigger Splash, I Am Love).
Starring: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, David Gordon Green, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny.
“No one your age is new at this,” Lee (Timothée Chalamet)
Heart emoji. Barf emoji. What a skilful, unusual cinema experience. A film that is both romantic and vomit-inducing. Emotional yet chilling. A cannibal love story road movie. BONES AND ALL will leave you bereft.
1988, USA. Maren (Taylor Russell) is the new girl in a small town. At the high school she does high school stuff. There is already the atmospheric undercurrent of unease, which then coalesces. Come the evening, her father (André Holland) locks Maren in her room. Immediately you fear for her. But she is not locked in the room for punishment, nor for abuse, nor for her protection. Escaping her confines, Maren heads to a peer’s sleepover. Is this going to be a cliché slasher flick where danger stalks from without? No. The soirée is soon abruptly abandoned after Maren chews on her host. We understand why their home is minimalist, they move around a lot. Quickly packing and driving off, her father has had enough and abandons Maren with a tape and a little cash. Maren’s coming of age journey begins. BONES AND ALL is a brutal entry in the growing pains subgenre.
Starring: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, David Gordon Green, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny.
“No one your age is new at this,” Lee (Timothée Chalamet)
Heart emoji. Barf emoji. What a skilful, unusual cinema experience. A film that is both romantic and vomit-inducing. Emotional yet chilling. A cannibal love story road movie. BONES AND ALL will leave you bereft.
1988, USA. Maren (Taylor Russell) is the new girl in a small town. At the high school she does high school stuff. There is already the atmospheric undercurrent of unease, which then coalesces. Come the evening, her father (André Holland) locks Maren in her room. Immediately you fear for her. But she is not locked in the room for punishment, nor for abuse, nor for her protection. Escaping her confines, Maren heads to a peer’s sleepover. Is this going to be a cliché slasher flick where danger stalks from without? No. The soirée is soon abruptly abandoned after Maren chews on her host. We understand why their home is minimalist, they move around a lot. Quickly packing and driving off, her father has had enough and abandons Maren with a tape and a little cash. Maren’s coming of age journey begins. BONES AND ALL is a brutal entry in the growing pains subgenre.
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The tape contains her father’s account of who Maren is. One wonders why on earth he did not explain to Maren that she was a cannibal, but it appears that she blacked out during carnivorous episodes. (So, getting her to believe might have been tricky?) Only now she starts to be present. A teenage girl, alone, with little cash and no friends has the audience fear for her even though she is a people-eater. From here on, there is an ever-present dread masterfully woven into the runtime.
Maren’s mission is to find her long-absent mother. Along the way, the people she meets are the stuff of nightmares. Think I SAW THE DEVIL (2010). On a stopover while crossing the country, Sully (Mark Rylance) smells her. Sully is not the wholesome Tom Hanks character in the Clint Eastwood movie. Her isolation and poverty make Maren vulnerable. We are continually unsure of Sully’s intentions. He slowly begins to explain to Maren what her father should have. Though, he is far from a Mr Miyagi mentor type. We are introduced to a parallel world of cannibals. There aren’t many of them, but we come to witness the devastation they wreak. “We ruin lives we don’t even see,” states Maren.
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“Never ever eat an eater,” Sully dishes rule number one. Menace pervades. Even the haircuts are creepy, ranging from the goofy to the downright scary. Sully’s ponytail couldn’t be more off-putting. Mark Rylance delivers one of the most unnerving performances I have ever seen. His eccentricity is the opposite of charming. He sports a feather in his cap. A collection of badges on his jacket. A utility waistcoat. Oh, and the eight-foot hair braid victim memento he carries around with him. Perhaps even worse, Sully talks about himself in the third person.
Sully is the initial guide for Maren and the audience. He talks of flesh the way you’d imagine a vampire would. Sully ate his own grandfather. Let that sink in. Maren slips away from Sully. The hurt on his face is palpable. Sully’s loneliness is clear. She’d rather be alone than be in his company says it all.
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Maren then meets Lee in a supermarket. The romantic drive of the story begins. He is a fellow cannibal. They live hand to mouth. As they meet more in this netherworld, a dangerous disturbing energy emanates. The movie is almost apocalyptic. Think THE ROAD (2009). (A side point, did Sully start off like Lee?)
The idea of cannibalism is used cleverly, representing numerous analogies: from outcasts to orphans. Arguably anyone on the fringes of society without a safety net. The strongest metaphor is that of addicts. From alcohol and narcotics to shopping and food. The compulsion and addiction fuels self-destruction and the possible destruction of relationships and those in the orbit. BONES AND ALL coveys empathy and disgust, making the film very human.
BONES AND ALL is Luca Guadagnino’s best film. His most satisfying cinema experience. One of the best horror movies of 2022.
