Bones and All review: Timothée Chalamet smoulders in cannibal movie
It’s always interesting when an actor and director reunite. Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino sent Timothée Chalamet’s star into orbit with the Oscar nominated Call Me By Your Name. And now, five years on, the pair come together again. Bones and All shows that success hasn’t dulled the duo’s creative spark.
The plot focuses around Maren, played by Taylor Russell, a young woman in 1980s Mid-West America that struggles to fit into society due to her hunger for… human flesh. (Yep.) She goes on the run and falls for a young guy called Lee, played by Chalamet. Hitting the road in search of answers, the pair cling to each other as the path becomes more perilous.
The peculiar mixture of themes make the film hard to pitch. There is the unavoidable grizzliness of the cannibalism, which is unsettling but not scary. And then there’s the story of two outsiders on a journey – they could just as easily be addicts, or queer youth driven from their homes.
It has the grit of an 80s vampire movie, with Chalamet’s smoulder reminding this viewer of Jason Patric in The Lost Boys. It’s helped along by a whole host of quotable lines that ruminate on their isolation (“the world of love wants no monsters in it”) and mysterious lore, like another “eater”, played by Mark Rylance, being able to smell Maren from far away.
Despite being the least recognisable name, Russell is the standout performer. Letting the audience in on her moral struggle, she shows Maren as someone both hopeful and hopeless. Chalamet returns to Guadagnino’s world a much more assured performer, and works perfectly with his co-star. There is also another Call Me By Your Name alum in Michael Stuhlbarg.
Bones and All takes some endurance, but if you have the stomach this is a bloodstained romance that offers plenty of memorable moments.
Bones and All is in cinemas now
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