Luca Guadagnino has a knack for disturbing sex scenes. Especially when Dune star Timothée Chalamet is involved. In the cult film Call Me by Your Name, Chalamet had to pretend to masturbate with a peach. For his latest love story, Italian director Guadagnino dreamed up a similarly… special scene for his star. And in its bloodiness it fits in perfectly with the rest of Bones and All, that most romantic horror film of recent years.
In Bones and All, Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet search for love – and human flesh
When Maren (Taylor Russell) turns 18, she suddenly finds herself all alone in the world. Her father left her, he can no longer deal with her special condition. Because Maren comes over at regular intervals an uncontrollable hunger for human flesh. The only thing Maren has left is her father’s cassette – the film takes place in the 1980s. And the desire to find her mother, to find out more about why she is the way she is.
Maren quickly finds out that she is not alone in her cannibalistic tendencies. But the aging cannibal Sully (Mark Rylance) scares her even more than being alone. It is different with the sensitive Lee (Timothée Chalamet), who was rejected by his family and struggles through as a survivor on the fringes of society. Lee also doesn’t know where he belongs and whether people like him even have a future.
Bones and All-Star Taylor Russell celebrated her breakthrough with the drama Waves:
Waves – Trailer (German) HD
Together, the two feel a little less alone and eventually break up on one Road trip through the USA up, towards the last known whereabouts of Maren’s mother (Chloë Sevigny). In the process, the two young adults not only grow closer, they also get better and better at finding human victims that nobody misses. Until Maren’s past catches up with them.
The cannibal romance is a beautifully sickening mix of horror film and Instagram aesthetic
©MGM
Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) fall in love on their cannibal road trip
When Bones and All was shown to the public for the first time at the Venice Film Festival, one or the other left the cinema much paler.
Luca Guadagnino once again manages to capture a wonderfully tender love story in pictures that would make the average Instagram model chop off an arm. Like here two broken people negotiating their own humanity and experiencing genuine acceptance for the first time is touching in a way few coming-of-age movies can.
Yet behind every moment the camera lovingly over Timothée Chalamet’s perfectly lit face drives, the next nightmarish binge lurking in run-down apartments somewhere in the US backcountry.
Sparsely clad people slide on their knees across blood-smeared floors, then walk around to bend smacking over entrails. Fingers are bitten off, parts of the victims are severed and kept as trophies, dried bodily fluids are only insufficiently washed from encrusted undershirts. Sometimes you can almost smell the pictures. At the latest then one becomes nauseous.
And yet: If you hold out until the end, you will not only curse the contents of your stomach, but will probably cry a little. Because Bones and All is true Horror, blood and serial killer road trip on the one hand. On the other hand, there is also a love story that seems almost impossible, which not only hits the stomach but also the heart.
Bones and All will be in German cinemas from November 24, 2022.
Bones and All in the podcast
In the latest edition of the FILMSTARTS podcast on the screen, moderator Pascal talks to the editors Björn and Nina about Bones And All. Luca Guadagnino’s new film is about identity, love, being an outsider and… cannibalism. You can find out how the very unusual road movie with Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell was received in the podcast.
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The screen love is the weekly cinema and film podcast of our colleagues from FILMSTARTS.
How do you like Bones and All?