Bones and All – first-look review

At the end of Mau­rice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, when Max must return home, the wild things cry out ​“Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!” It’s an omi­nous dec­la­ra­tion of love, but what could be more roman­tic than some­one – quite lit­er­al­ly – becom­ing a part of you? This line of prose comes to mind after watch­ing Luca Guadagnino’s Bones & All, in which a pair of teenage can­ni­bals find love in a hope­less place (rur­al Indi­ana) and set off on a road trip across the Unit­ed States in search of answers and a sense of belonging.

Adapt­ed by Guadagnino’s reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor David Kaj­ganich from Camille DeAn­ge­lis’ young adult nov­el of the same name, it’s a love sto­ry with teeth that sees shel­tered Maren (Tay­lor Rus­sell) forced to strike out on her own after her father Leonard (Andre Hol­land) aban­dons her, sick­ened by his daughter’s pecu­liar appetites. After a dis­turb­ing encounter with fel­low ​‘Eater’ Sul­ly (a suit­ably creepy Mark Rylance) Maren cross­es paths with Lee (Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met), a wiry punk with a blue pick-up truck and lit­tle inter­est in mak­ing friends. Despite his ini­tial aloof­ness, Maren gets under his skin, and a bond between them forms as they set off to Min­neso­ta in search of the moth­er she has nev­er met.

Work­ing with upcom­ing cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Arseni Khachat­u­ran, Guadagni­no sticks to small towns and back­roads, and often­times the film’s vast shots of breath­tak­ing open coun­try and eerie lim­i­nal spaces are rem­i­nis­cent of Bad­lands, anoth­er film about young out­casts on the lamb, in search of their own ver­sion of the Amer­i­can dream. The afflic­tion Maren and Lee share has man­i­fest­ed dif­fer­ent­ly in each of them; while she is book­ish and gen­tle, Lee is all sinewy mus­cle and sharp edges. ​“When you weigh 140lbs wet you got­ta have a big atti­tude,” he tells her, short­ly after their first meeting.

It’s a famil­iar dynam­ic, but Rus­sell and Cha­la­met are charm­ing enough to breathe new life into it. He melts around her, learn­ing to open up about the trau­ma of his past, and in turn teach­es Maren how to sur­vive in a cru­el world – one in which they seem to be both preda­tor and prey. Along the way they run into var­i­ous strangers (Michael Stuhlbarg and David Gor­don Green put in a fun show­ing as a pair of sin­is­ter bump­kin lovers who come across the young cou­ple in a seclud­ed clear­ing) in a man­ner that brings to mind David Lynch’s The Straight Sto­ry, as though Guadagni­no is pay­ing homage to the estab­lished cin­e­mat­ic canon of Americana.

While com­par­isons to Julia Ducournau’s flesh-eat­ing com­ing-of-ager Raw are inevitable by nature of the sub­ject mat­ter, Bones & All has a more fre­net­ic, wild pace to it. It’s a shame that some of the most inter­est­ing scenes from DeAn­ge­lis’ nov­el end up on the cut­ting room floor, but at least it’s in ser­vice of giv­ing Rus­sell and Cha­la­met space to cap­ture the inti­ma­cy of young love. There’s light among the dark­ness, and for every ten­don ripped out with teeth there’s a gen­tle caress; a shy smile. Cha­la­met is par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive, charm­ing and wily, par­tic­u­lar­ly deft when it comes to care­ful­ly unrav­el­ling Lee’s past transgressions.

After the silli­ness of his Sus­piria remake, it’s good to see Guadagni­no focussing on one of his great­est strengths: show­ing how we lust after and love one anoth­er. Bones & All gets at the fragili­ty and futil­i­ty of human exis­tence, and the fleet­ing moments of joy we find between birth and death. It’s an imper­fect but effort­less­ly charm­ing film, one that feels lived-in and loved (shout out to the eclec­tic, youth­ful sound­track and Elet­tra Simos’ expres­sive cos­tume design) and speaks to the human desire to love and be loved, in spite of our flaws. Bones and all.