Review: BONES AND ALL

Young Maren is starting to fit into the new high school enough to get invited to a sleepover. She begs off, saying her father, saying that he has issues with that kind of stuff. Issues: when she goes to bed she sneaks a screwdriver into her room and her dad latches her in. She gets out, goes to the sleepover and commits an atrocity which she flees. Dad's seen this before, so when Maren bangs on the door with a bloody mouth Dad angrily shouts that they have three minutes. At the next town, Maren wakes alone with a cassette and a wad of bills, the world waits to use or be used by her. What she finds, without significant spoilage, is that there are more people like her who go by smell to tell each other apart from the normals. And this is how Maren finds love.

Luca Guadagnino has a lot to make up for with me after his pointless remake of Suspiria (twice as long and half as good as the original) but the originality of this one drew me to it. And I was neither disappointed nor smitten with it. Though, from the Suspiria debacle, I already knew that the director seemed to think that horror meant excessive gore and would happily set it up without the understanding that shock and horror are distinct and not mutually dependent. So, I went in with the trepidation that he would try so hard that he would achieve disgust without dread or fear, to play it too hard. When I bought my ticket at the Nova, the woman who sold it to me pointed to a card stand which bore a warning about the violence and we had a brief conversation about being wary of the gore. Like her, I had dithered over seeing it.

After I got home from the screening I checked to see if the Australian release was cut but apparently not. It has been released as an MA 15+ here where it's 18 or R in the UK and US. Same running time and, reading the content advisory notes at IMDB, I can safely say I saw everything described. And yet reviewers I trust (at least to their response to issues like gore) were really gunning it about the gore and disturbing moments.

There is gore and plenty of worrisome passages between characters but I've seen far more intensity in those areas in many other films. Maybe I'm just jaded but, if you were tempted by this one yet worried about the nasty stuff, it's really not all that. You'll see far worse in an old Fulci film.

The gore, however, is not the point or, more accurately, not the real focus here. That is taken by the development and growing depth of the central duo. Maren and Lee are served by writing that feels observant and restrained. I was reminded, in a positive way, of Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen in Badlands, a film that this strongly resembles for its light touch and patient craft in the examination of attraction. On that notion, the casting is a dream for this effect as Taylor Russell delivers a flawed and confused young woman gripping anything that might add meaning to her condition and a world that doesn't declare rules for anyone of her needs to live within it. Young adult of the times, Timothee Chalamet uses his effortless beauty to endear us to his rough southern boy who is surprised to draw tenderness from his attraction to Maren. These are a pair of violent cannibals but damn me if I don't love them as they go.

Zen master of cinematic restraint, Mark Rylance, excels in the role of the veteran "eater" who develops an unhealthy lust for Maren (even within this context). He displays the motions of charm but his dead-eyed hunger gives us the creeps at sight of him. It's possibly Rylance's most powerful movie role and puts him beside other whackos like Blue Velvet's Frank, Wild at Heart's Bobby Peru and Hannibal Lecter (my god would he make a good Hannibal!). When he shows up, we squirm and that's the way the nature of this film intended it. He is the one who enlightens Maren and us of the ways of the eaters in tones avuncular and terrifying.

In addition to the sourced British post punk and popcorn rock of the '80s we are treated to a subtly constructed acoustic and synthesised wash which glues it together and gives voice to the beauty of the landscapes (of which many and lush) and leaves us helpless for the violence when it approaches.

While there are some directors I think I'll never reconcile with (hi, Wes Anderson) I will admit defeat against the surprising charms of Luca Guadagnino for this outing. He really didn't go the Gaspar Noe route and beat us senseless with gore. He added to the classic Badlands without trying to hijack it for his own purposes (Suspiria). And he ended up making a substantial and enjoyable film.