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Bones and All
USA / Italy 2022
produced by Timothée Chalamet, Luca Guadagnino, David Kajganich, Francesco Melzi d'Eril, Lorenzo Mieli, Marco Morabito, Gabriele Moratti, Theresa Park, Peter Spears, Marco Colombo (executive), Giovanni Corrado (executive), Jonathan Montepare (executive), Raffaella Viscardi (executive), Moreno Zani (executive) for Frenesy Film Company, Per Capita Productions
directed by Luca Guadagnino
starring Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, Claudio Encarnacion Montero, Hannah Aileen Barlow, Anna Cobb, Kendle Coffey, Melissa McDermott Currin, Brady Gentry, Madeleine Hall, Sue Hopkins, Rachel J. Jones, Pete Law, Mion Lee, Dori Lucas, Johanna McGinley, Kevin E. Murphy, Tom O'Brien, Karen Olchovy, Ellie Parker, Erin Reardon, Claudia Richardt, Francesca Scorsese, Greg Siewny, Max Soliz, Diane Wasnak
screenplay by David Kajganich, based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis, music by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross
review by Mike Haberfelner
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The American Midwest, the 1980s: After having bitten another girl's
(Kendle Coffey) finger off during a sleepover, young Maren (Taylor
Russell) flees the scene in a frenzy, back to her dad (André Holland) -
who's well-prepared for an event like this and they skip town in a matter
of minutes. Because you see, Maren has a natural penchant to eat human
flesh, she's a cannibal by nature rather than choice. In public she can
control her urge, in private, not so much. So she and her dad are pretty
much constantly on the run - which at one point gets too much for her dad,
and he abandons her, but leaving her with a wad of money and a tape
relaying her story, and giving her a clue to her backstory, the address of
her grandmother (Jessica Harper). Trying to get to grandma, Maren makes
the acquaintance of Sully (Mark Rylance), who turns out to be a natural
cannibal just like herself and offers to take her under his wing. And to
his credit, he's very caring and never tries to take advantage of her -
but he's also a creepy old man, so in an unguarded moment she runs away.
Eventually, she runs into yet another natural cannibal, Lee (Timothée
Chalamet), an attractive young man with his heart in the right place, even
if his condition has forced him into becoming a thief and occasional
murderer. The two quickly fall in love and decide to travel together, and
Lee even takes Maren to her grandmother. That doesn't work out well at
all, but Maren learns that her mother's (Chloë Sevigny) still around, kept locked up in an asylum. When
Maren goes visit her, she finds mum has gnawed off both her arms up to her
elbow, which of course comes like a big shock to her, and she wisely
decides she doesn't want to become her mum. So she and Lee decide to
settle down to try to live a normal life in Lee's hometown, very much to
the delight of Lee's sister (Anna Cobb), who didn't approve of Lee's habit
of relentlessly crossing the country and only coming for short visits.
Problem is, Sully has been trailing Maren for all these weeks as he to a
point sees her as his protegée, maybe even more, and now he wants to
reclaim her, if need be by force ... The film starts out very
promising, like a subversive cannibal anti-horror movie, with all the
gruesomeness intact - but before long it descends into a Midwestern coming
of age drama/romance about two attractive people naturally drawn to one
another on the run. There's nothing against this per se, it's just that Bones
and All despite its suitably gritty aesthetics can't help but just
heap on cliché after cliché, while soon abandoning the gruesome
foundations of the premise (until the finale at least), concentrating on
its generic love story instead, and really in the end solving the
premise's moral dilemma by blaming everything on a bad guy that actually
has nothing to do with the central, internal conflict. Too bad, because
the beginning was great, but as a whole the film feels like a failed
opportunity.
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