Sympathy for The Devil

Luca Guadagnino has made a career of sucking every last ounce of fat from the narrative bones of his projects. From his arthouse critical darling Call Me By Your Name, a sweeping pedophilic queer romance, to his celebrated – though gaudy and overwrought – remake of Suspiria, Guadagnino suckles on the teat of indulgence. This viewer has found Guadagnino’s style overtly lugubrious, feigning depth by overstaying his welcome, applying a Terrence Malick aesthetic template to otherwise intriguing conceptual pitches. This is no different in his latest adaptation, Bones and All, a cannibal love story that 100% should be my jam but wasn’t entirely.

Adapted from Camille DeAngelis‘ 2015 novel of the same name, Bones and All introduces Maren Yearly (Taylor Russell), an “eater” on the fringes of society. What is an eater? Well, Maren eats people you see. Be that the neck of an unsuspecting babysitter or a new friend’s finger at a slumber party, Maren cannot resist her temptation to consume her fellow man. What she isn’t aware of is the fact that there are others like her, hiding under the spacious skies and fruited plains of the American countryside.

After her latest “eating” incident forces her to flee her most-recent temp home, Maren encounters Sully, an lurky elder eater imbued with a sufficiently eerie aura by Mark Rylance. He talks in a Southern twang that barely registers above a whisper – there’s something deeply unsettling about this man from the first time he steps into the shadow-filled frame and the reliable Rylance makes him the film’s most intriguing aspect. Nevertheless, Sully teaches Maren about their people, how to – quite literally – sniff them out, and the best practices he’s curated relating to his regular consumption of human flesh. For instance, wait until people die a natural death before eating them. Which sounds good enough in theory until you realize that Sully will break into the homes of the dying and watch with bated breath as they fade from this world. But Sully’s long life of cannibalism has left him lonely and he longs for companionship. Companionship that Maren is unwilling to provide to such a creeper.

Maren takes to the road again when she encounters Timothée Chalamet’s Lee, another eater – but young, sexy, and swaddled in edgy clothes. The cannibalistic duo strike up a romance, gallivanting around the country, eating people here and there, brushing up against other eaters, and trying to unfurl their respective family histories to figure out what it is that makes them the way they are. Maren’s budding sexuality speaks to the universal yearning of youth, with the cannibalistic aspect of Bones and All less a commentary on the ravenous appetites of sexual awakening (see Raw for that) and more just a horrific backdrop to watch these relationships unspool atop. They are fated to their urges, a tragedy of devils, and we know that a normal life will evade them. No matter how hard they seek it.

The impressive supporting cast boasts Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, and David Gordon Green, all of whom are allowed to sink their teeth into the weird feral nature of the eater community and explore how cannibalistic communities would manifest differently across various states and populations. But for all the hot-blooded passion and cold-blooded murder, Bones and All left me ultimately lukewarm. Melancholic though rangy, there is little urgency in Guadagnino 130-minute coming-of-age cannibal romance, despite the yin-and-yang of some truly gruesome sequences (a man promptly exited the theater when the first on-screen consumption started) and Arseni Khachaturan’s ethereal and stunning cinematography. Strong performances and artful horror solidify this genre-bending drama as one worth checking out but Bones and All will likely prove to be too brutal for the arthouse bunch while being overly fey and highfalutin for most horror aficionados. What should have been a vicious temptation remains but a Guadagnino tease; a compelling and beautifully-filmed tale ensnared once more in exhaustive pretense.

CONCLUSION: Though it’s not the inspired mash-up that a romantic cannibal roadtrip movie promises, ‘Bones and All’ features a strong cast (Rylance is especially great) and striking production elements. Luca Guadagnino is up to his usual long-winded ways though, stretching the story to its absolute breaking point.