If there was ever going to be a director that could pull off a shockingly gruesome yet heartrendingly romantic coming-of-age cannibal love-story it was going to be Luca Guadagnino. His back catalogue features profound romantic dramas I am Love and Call Me by Your Name and violent, tense features Suspiria and A Bigger Splash. Bones and All walks the finest of tightropes between these contrasting tones, but somehow sticks the landing with a tenderly sketched, blood-splattered romance.
Adapted by screenwriter David Kajganich from Camille DeAngelis’ 2015 novel, Bones and All sees Timothée Chalamet reunite with director Luca Guadagnino, but the film’s beating heart is Taylor Russell. She plays Maren, an introverted 18-year-old in the mid-eighties who we are first introduced to munching on her friend’s finger at a sleepover. Maren’s cannibalistic urges have been growing for years and her single father (André Holland) cannot take anymore and abandons his daughter. Left to forge her own way through life, Maren sets off in search of a mother she’s never met.
On the road Maren encounters likeminded ‘feeders’ who share her appetite for flesh. She chows down on one unfortunate individual with Sully (Mark Rylance), an eerie, older man who sniffs out Maren and teaches her his cannibalistic methods of survival. Unsettled by Sully’s creepy behaviour, Maren ditches him and falls into the arms of charming, messy-haired traveller Lee (Chalamet). He helps Maren explore her identity and the pair begin to carve out a more normal life together, until their pasts begin to catch up with them.
Guadagnino’s presentation of cannibalism is unlike any we’ve seen before. There’s a purity to it, even a sensuality, not simply revulsion. In other hands this might have come across in bad taste (no pun intended) or been played for cheap laughs, but Guadagnino imbues the film with such a deep sense of compassion, humanity and longing. Bones and All delivers on its carnivorous premise with a series of blood-drenched thrills, however, they are artfully intertwined with a heartfelt story of loneliness, love and of a desperate need to connect.
Credit should also be given to a fantastic score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross who implement an array of nostalgic, eighties pop tunes that never lean into cliché. Equally outstanding is the sound design that brings the flesh-eating gore to life with slobbery squelches and chomps. While the film’s pacing feels a little loose in sections, Guadagnino’s beautiful visuals help engage when the narrative lulls.
His visual style places the fine acting talent to the forefront, particularly Russell whose deeply affecting, multifaceted turn makes her journey of self-discovery so palpable and universal. Opposite her, Chalamet is reliably excellent, and the duo share an acutely believable, likeable chemistry despite the perverse horrors they are committing. Elsewhere, Rylance and Michael Stuhlbarg put in two creepy yet comedically off-kilter performances as ‘eaters’ that have unashamedly embraced their grisly, cannibalistic lifestyle.
In Bones and All, Guadagnino finds beauty in the most macabre of settings, crafting a moving, horrifying and romantic meditation on companionship and how we find ourselves in other people. This is a bloody brilliant treat to savour.
