‘Bones and All’ Movie Review: Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet Indulge in Road Trip Cannibal Love Story
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is a master of quiet dramatic storytelling that slowly, but assuredly finds a way to hook its teeth into the viewer. A Bigger Splash, Call Me by Your Name, and Suspiria are just a few examples of his ability to weave big theoretical questions into risky narratives that avoid conventions in a radical fashion. Bones and All doesn’t reach the heights of his most substantial works, but it continues to maneuver worthwhile questions with inspired artistry.
‘Bones and All’ sets out on the open road
Maren (Taylor Russell) is a young woman who lives alone with her father (André Holland). They learn to live with their heads ducked low due to her unusual appetite for human flesh that she can’t control. However, he suddenly takes off one day and never returns, leaving her to fend for herself as an “eater” with the only choice being to push forward and survive.
Along the way, Maren meets another eater named Lee (Timothée Chalamet), who also travels alone. They develop a deep connection as they live on the margins of society, progressively placing trust in one another. The further that Maren and Lee fall in love, the more they begin to question their existence and how to live their lives.
Luca Guadagnino explores the trauma of the outsider
Maren and her father seek a sense of normalcy in their lives despite her occasionally gruesome acts of consumption. Bones and All finds them at the conclusion of the seemingly never-ending cycle of changing names and homes each time she indulges in human flesh. Maren yearns to make more friends at school, but a sleepover gone wrong leaves her without a father or a mother, whose identity he hid from her throughout her life. With nowhere else to go and no one to rely on, she sets her eyes on tracking down her mother to find love and an understanding of why she is the way that she is.
Bones and All tells Maren’s story through a tape recorder that her father left for her, explaining why he left and the memories of their journey that she doesn’t recall. As a result, she has no meaning of home or a true concept of family. Maren crosses paths with an intimidating and sinister man named Sully (Mark Rylance), who teaches her how to use her acute senses to smell other eaters and potential human meals. He appears to offer her solace, companionship, and mentorship, but there’s something not quite right about him, other than the fact that he’s a cannibal.
Lee introduces a different type of eater into Maren’s life, as she feels a sense of comfort around him. Their developing romance fabricates a whole new meaning of the word “home” for her, which is wherever they’re together. Lee has a firmer grasp on the importance of family, but he always holds them at a distance. The couple share shame in the way that others look at them, always running from something, including themselves. Bones and All tells the story of two outsiders constantly on the run from trauma, encountering other ominous travelers who share the same goal of survival and sustenance.
‘Bones and All’ is a hushed cannibal horror tale
Guadagnino’s foray into the grotesque wasn’t a one-time jab with Suspiria. He doesn’t hold back in his road trip cannibal movie, bringing the full muscle of his audio department to instill gnarly sound effects through the film’s most gut-churning moments. It speaks to what constitutes a monster in a literal and a figurative sense. David Kajganich’s screenplay asks the audience to take the good with the bad. Despite their cannibalistic urges, it would be a mistake to dismiss the humanity within and beyond it.
Russell showcases her depth as a performer, allowing the emotion to lead on her face rather than on her words. Her sorrow and feelings of abandonment are felt in every frame, but the audience sees moments of joy in her eyes as she interacts with Lee. Meanwhile, Chalamet is equally subtle in his performance, bringing the dynamic emotion that audiences are accustomed to seeing from him at exactly the right moments. Meanwhile, Rylance’s Sully is on an entirely different plane of existence. He’s campy, unhinged, and skin-crawlingly frightening, generating the film’s most tense moments.
Kajganich’s screenplay and Guadagnino’s direction successfully dig at the loneliness of those living at the margins of our society. However, there are two components to Bones and All – one part cannibal thriller and one part romantic coming-of-age road trip. Rather than marrying them into a cohesive picture, they often step on one another’s toes. Inherent LGBTQ themes run deep, some of which blossom beautifully, while others feel dodgy. Unlike Guadagnino’s approach to Call Me by Your Name, the romance doesn’t get the room to breathe here, greatly diminishing its emotional payoff. Meanwhile, the thriller component feels underbaked.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t moments where both components are individually successful. Maren and Lee share a few remarkably tender moments that truly resonate with the film’s core themes. Additionally, some of the suspicious figures that they meet along the way generate deeply unsettling moments that will make you squirm.
Bones and All approaches its wandering social outcasts with both a sense of tranquility and ferocity in one motion. Yet, it has a coldness to it that holds the viewer at arm’s length, never quite managing to reach the emotional highs that it aims to attain. It poses engrossing sociological questions as they relate to survival as an outcast in American society.
Bones and All munches into select theaters on Nov. 18 and everywhere on Nov. 23.
