Luca Guadagnino and Timothee Chalamet reunite in a tale of an insatiable romance between two youths, each trying to outrun violence and trauma. And yes, they are cannibals. (Armie Hammer, eat your heart out). If that parenthetical aside was too dark for you, go ahead and skip Bones and All.
Maren (Taylor Russell) has spent nearly all of her short life in a state of impermanence. Even her home is more a place to crash than a safe space. Her father a figure of concern more than a doting dad. And so, when she strikes out on her own, she does so seeking the first source of impermanence in her life: her mother.
The road being what it is, she soon discovers that her plight – a seemingly irresistible desire to feast on human flesh – is not hers alone. Others of the same ilk begin to reveal themselves, some for good, others for ill. Among them are sketchy loner Sully (an against type and positively despicable Mark Rylance) and charismatic Lee (Chalamet).
If Sully is Maren’s worst nightmare for companionship, Lee is her dream. Young, comfortable in what he has to do to survive, Lee is a new look for Chalamet. Unpretentious and earnest, he’s a salt-of-the-earth heartthrob who gives Maren a glimpse of some other way of being. It’s not much, but it is made powerful by the way it evokes the rawness of adolescent feeling.
Part sunsoaked road movie, part abject horror spectacle, sometime romance, Bones and All is a film quite unlike any other you’ll encounter in cinemas this year. It sits heavy on first watch, palpable and not entirely present. But it also sits with you. Pricking the corners of your mind with meditations on all it reveals, and all it doesn’t.