LFF - Bones and All
Still from Bones and All (Warner Bros.)
Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All is about broken nomads above being a film about vampires or cannibalism. Much like Suspiria, Guadagnino is making secondary usage out of horror in the pursuit of emblematic drama. Don’t get me wrong, though, as this moving – if a little clunky – motion picture makes room for the genres to dance together in tender fashion.
Maren (Taylor Russell) is an ‘eater’. For a movie seemingly about people who consume flesh, you don’t know Maren is. It’s never precisely mentioned once. After a mishap at a sleepover, she journeys across the United States in pursuit of her absent mother. Bumping into an ensemble of curious characters – some friendlier than others – Maren learns a whole lot about who she is as a person. Monster or not.
Although not quite as graphically tortuous as Suspiria, Bones and All does not hold back on the gnarliest of moments. If you’re curious, we’re treated to someone’s finger being chewed apart not even 10 minutes into the film. Lovely. And it doesn’t necessarily get that much better after.
Soon enough, we meet Lee – a chain-smoking, rag-wearing pretty boy from Kentucky played by Timothée Chalamet. He too, is an eater. This isn’t some of Chalamet’s best work, but he truly gives his all in the moments that matter. There’s a scene towards the end of the film where he exudes a relentlessly uncomfortable eagerness amongst sadness in his voice. It, quite simply, broke me.
Russell is doing good work here too. However, it’s Mark Rylance’s portrayal of a devious fedora-wearing eater named Sully that steals the show. Rylance completely enhances the film, providing darkly comedic moments as well as terrifying antagonistic outbursts. Hell hath no fury if he’s not recognised come Award Season.
It’s the combination of Atticus Ross & Trent Reznor’s beautifully poignant score abreast Arseni Khachaturan’s ravishing scope of 1980s America that really uphold the film and its many potential readings. I, personally, saw the greatest thematic resonance in Bones and All’s portrayal of addiction, or more so, children of addiction. The inescapable run towards trying to be better, but needing to not be, and the poisoned identity that comes with that.
This is not the easiest of watches. Its oftentimes plodding pacing and grotesque content will put a fair number of viewers off. All that said, vile imagery shakes hands gently and adequately with the inescapable quality of being alive and being shitty. Bones and All asks if the product we are because of our past is the product we must be, or are destroying ourselves to become.
