Luca Guadagnino's follow-up to Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria is a love story about cannibals, which is an odd choice considering his collaboration with Armie Hammer in the past with Call Me By Your Name (I had to mention it). All jokes aside I was a big fan of his previous two films, his choice to go with a totally different style and to remake a horror classic with Suspiria is something I admire and I think he nailed the task, so I was curious to see is new film Bones And All, starring and produced by Timothée Chalamet.
Synopsis: "The story follows a pair of young cannibalistic lovers who flee together on a road trip across the country."
Bones And All is quite the bloody experience and not for the faint of heart, it features dedicated performances from everyone involved and Luca Guadagnino's vision is the main driver with the actors: terrific editing, solid music and atmosphere, I was mesmerized for 2 hours. It has its moments of shock and gore, but it's all complemented with a sophisticated artistic vision, I never felt like it was distasteful. I think the writing really stand out as well, the story doesn't exactly have a conventional three-act structure but I was always invested.
Taylor Russell is absolutely phenomenal in this but I also want to highlight everyone's work: Mark Rylance & Timothée Chalamet are both standouts but you also get a few surprise appearances in the cast and everyone delivers. Taylor Russell brings so much humanity to this role and make us empathize about cannibals who are actually eating and killing people. Despite the gruesome nature of the story, there's something beautiful about those 2 lovers connecting and bonding over something they share.
The movie really shines because of its early 1980's setting in small American towns with two lovers on the road visiting different states and different people. They have to stick with each other to overcome their cannibalism or maybe learn how to live with it, one could almost say it has a "Easy Rider" vibe to it. It's not an easy watch but for some reasons I was captivated with the story & the characters. It works mostly because of the directing and the acting, you can take Mark Rylance's performance as Sully for example, he makes your skin crawl and his presence in the film is golden. A great Friday night watch.
Initial Score: 8.5/10
Bones And All is now playing in theaters.
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