A satisfying meal, 'Bones & All'
A long-awaited reunion for director Luca Guadagnino and star/producer(!) Timothée Chalamet, “Bones & All” adapts the dark young adult (YA) novel by Camille DeAngelis with a script by frequent Guadagnino collaborator David Kajganich.
Maren (a captivating Taylor Russell) is a teen girl whose secret predilection for flesh-eating gets her kicked out of a slumber party and, subsequently, the sleepy town where she and her dad (André Holland) have been laying low. Ever on the run, she eventually encounters other “Eaters” like her: one an experienced nomad (Mark Rylance), and another closer to her age, Lee (Chalamet), a kindred spirit. Together they try to find her roots so she can make sense of her life.
“Bones & All” pretty deftly mixes a couple of genres together: the YA romance, the coming-of-age story, the road trip, and, of course: cannibalism. In Guadagnino’s confident direction, with Kajganich’s script, and with Russell & Chalamet’s chemistry, it makes for a swimmingly heady brew, sensuous in its delights, so much so that you almost forget about the icky parts until they rear their heads. The rich colors, the soft light, the entrancing score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, the details on which cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan’s camera alights, all work together in maintaining that hazy suspension.
Illuminating
Set in America’s heartland during the mid-’80s (Reagan bumper stickers prominently on pickup trucks), Lee and Maren crisscross neighboring states, sometimes on the lam, sometimes with a target in mind. They run into Eaters like Jake (Michael Stuhlbarg), himself traveling with a wannabe
Eater named Brad (played by director David Gordon Green[!]). Learning about the subculture to which they inadvertently belong, at turns illuminating and downright creepy, this particular scene has a twisted frisson for anyone whose soul was quietly devastated by Stuhlbarg’s moving scene with Chalamet in Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name.”
The filmmakers give the cannibals a certain skill, the ability to “sniff” each other out, which one can train over time to cover longer distances. It provides a tension for the story, as the young lovers are always on edge, ever wary, ever conscious of their own youth and shorter experience compared to the “veterans.” Maren, particularly, has been living her life mostly suppressing her compulsion, and watching Lee “seduce” and prep a stranger for feeding provides one of the more unforgettable sequences where the storytellers show that the main duo’s actions are not without their grisly consequences.
Like a lot of great teen fiction, the quality that “otherizes” the main characters can really stand in for anything, much like the “x-gene” mutation in Marvel’s X-Men comics of the time. It’s enough to make the characters feel ostracized, alone, looking for understanding in a harsh and uncaring world, and finding that sought-after solidarity and acceptance in one another. It helps that you have performers like Russell and Chalamet as your anchors, and surrounding them with greats like Rylance and Stuhlbarg only adds to your arsenal.
While the elements of a YA tale remain, the style in which the story is told, especially with the music by Reznor/ Ross, makes it feel like it has shed those trappings and tells a more interior, adult story. Its triumph is that despite the horror elements, what lingers post-viewing is the romance that bloomed between “Bones & All”’s main characters. Call it an aftertaste, if you like.
“Bones & All” mixes a couple of genres together: the YA romance, the coming-of-age story, the road trip and, of course: cannibalism