Bones and All – Review
130 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Luca Guadagnino
Directed by David Kajganich
**NOTE: Read Mark’s review below, then listen as he and Ryan discuss the film in more depth (along with GDT’s Pinocchio).**
Synopsis:
Bones and All is a story of first love between Maren, a young woman learning how to survive on the margins of society, and Lee, an intense and disenfranchised drifter; a liberating road odyssey of two young people coming into their own, searching for identity and chasing beauty in a perilous world that cannot abide who they are.
That synopsis completely avoids any mention of what this film is, which, in case you didn’t know already, is about the pair of romantic leads being cannibals.
But they’re not really cannibals. Cannibals CHOOSE to eat other humans; this pair (and others like them) NEED to eat humans. It’s a real, physical compulsion.
But putting that aside for a moment, let’s talk about the film itself.
Director Luca Guadagnino is known for making some unusual movies, such as the recent remake/soft-sequel to Suspiria, and Call Me Bay Your Name, also starring Timothée Chalamet and theoretical real-world cannibal Armie hammer, and Bones and All falls into that category, as well.
Well, not entirely. The world our leads live in is ours, and completely normal. The strangeness comes when the eating starts.
The performances are incredible, with palpable chemistry between Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell, and Mark Rylance giving yet another notable supporting performance as Sully, a kindly “Eater” who attempts to shepherd Maren into the life she finds herself unable to escape, before undergoing a somewhat sinister turn.
Yes, more sinister than eating people.
The film is beautiful to look at, as cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan frames and lights our young lovers to enhance every beautiful and grotesque moment to perfection.
Therein lies the rub, you see? Bones and All is, all things considered, a very good film. The love story is classic and believable between the leads, the supporting cast (such as it is) is effective, the idea of being and/or fearing the “other,” and it’s shot more than competently, but…
…but who is this movie for, really? With it’s constant equating of eating and love/sex/otherness, recommending it to teens seems patently irresponsible. People constantly (and rightfully) complain about young girls’ fetishizing the Joker/Harley Quinn “romanace” when it’s clearly inappropriate to do so; why would cannibalism somehow find itself a more acceptable version of love, especially when Bones and All is not at all subtle when it equates Lee’s cannibalism and his latent homosexual behaviors?
Honestly, the closest some of us around here could come to is to decide that there is actually no reason for this film to exist, which is completely antithetical to the fact that–technically–this is an excellent bit of filmmaking.
But it doesn’t need to exist. At all.
Which is why it will appeal to exactly the audience it shouldn’t.
Bones and All will hit select theaters on November 18 before opening wide on November 23 and stars Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, and Mark Rylance.
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