Bones and All is a film about love, isolation, connection, and cannibalism. It is a love story, twisted as it may be, about finding oneself and your place in the world – a new one for the coming-of-age list. It’s a wonderful film thanks to Arseni Khachanturan’s amazing cinematography and Luca Guadagnino’s beautiful direction.
Guadagnino’s decision to cast Timothée Chalamet, who appeared as Elio in his 2017 adaptation of Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name, in his next big film since as the human-flesh-eating, troubled Lee comes as both an obvious yet ironic choice. In the last year or so, numerous accounts of sexual assaults have been set against Armie Hammer, Chalamet’s co-star in Call Me By Your Name, whose sexual appetite for cannibalism and disturbing private life has in recent years come to light. In light of Chalamet’s former on-screen lover, Armie Hammer’s, sickening behaviour towards women, Guadagnino’s casting choices look all the more ironic, generating lots of attention many months before the films release.
When reviewing a film, obviously a lot of personal preference goes into the writing and star rating. Films that are disturbing in this manner are not something I tend to watch, but I understand that making an audience feel uncomfortable is the point. There’s no hiding that this is horrifying to watch, and honestly it feels difficult to root for their love when half of it is based on their shared love of eating people.
There is beauty in not watching the trailer of a film or seriously reading the descriptions because it means the events of the film and the nature of the characters are unfolded to you as and when the film decides. In this way I could not have been less ready for the first crunching of bones.
Maren Yearly, played by Taylor Russell, and Lee, are outcasts of society. They find each other and their love is somewhat beautiful – that they found each other in their isolated worlds, and in regard to the ending – incomprehensible for the average non human eating human. It’s obviously not a realistic depiction of cannibalism, and personally I hope there are not that many cannibals out there, as the couple seems to encounter a few.
The film itself is a metaphor for escape. They are both young and learning about the world and themselves. They feel unaccepted in the way that most young adults do and are travelling to disassociate with the world and eventually find a place where they can belong as they are. I supposed that every teenager feels on the margins of society and these two quite literally are, running from town to town killing and eating people, then moving on to the next place
Mark Rylance’s performance as Sully is astounding. His character is so endearingly creepy that it’s difficult to comprehend what his next action will be. Sully is one of the first cannibals that Maren encounters on her journey, and he claims that he could smell her, knowing they were alike. He takes her into a house, cooks her dinner, and then shows her a woman dying upstairs. He doesn’t like to kill so waits for the woman to pass naturally. And, so they await her to die of natural causes and then consume the body together. As friends…?
Bones and All is a great film. It’s deeply disturbing and yet at times beautiful and endearing. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The cannibal metaphor I can’t say is entirely relatable, nor does it aid the emotional aspect of the film, but it leads for a thrilling adventure.
“티모시 샬라메 (Timothee Chalamet) ‘더 킹 헨리 5세’ 03” by Nine Stars is licensed under CC BY 3.0.