Fine young cannibals
THOSE who were still there at the end of Bones And All (18, 130 mins, ★★★★), which I saw at this year’s Venice Film Festival, gave it an enthusiastic round of applause. But there were more than a few walk-outs, so be warned: it gets decidedly gruesome.
Really, it’s a vampire film with a difference, the difference being that the vampires here are cannibals, hard-wired to feast on human flesh. It’s also a road movie, but not one that Bob Hope and Bing Crosby would have recognised.
The setting is Reagan-era America, where Maren (Taylor Russell), while searching for her long-lost mother, hooks up and falls in love with Lee (Timothee Chalamet). Together they embark on a crime spree, like a hungry Bonnie and Clyde. They are both ‘eaters’ although there is an unwritten rule, passed on by a creepy old man superbly played by Mark Rylance: ‘Never, ever, eat an eater.’
Aided by some wonderful acting (even in small supporting roles by the likes of Chloe Sevigny and Michael
Stuhlbarg) director Luca Guadagnino somehow makes an unlikely story feel electrifyingly real. It’s a tremendously involving film, compellingly creepy, but emphatically not what you’d call fun for all the family.
■ NOR is Strange World (PG, 102 mins, ★★), though that’s precisely what it’s trying to be. It’s a Disney animation which tries so desperately to tick so many ‘message’ boxes — about the environment, teen sexuality, the responsibilities of fatherhood and plenty more — that it ends up, if not as an absolute mess, then only vaguely coherent.
But those expert animators at least make it look good, as three generations of the Clade family (voiced by Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal and Jaboukie Young-White) power through a weird land of flying jellyfish and much else besides, in a quest to save their way of life.