Film Review: "Bones and All" (2022).

From the director of Suspiria (2018) comes Bones and All. This coming-of-age romantic cannibal road film directed by Luca Guadagnino, adapted by David Kajganich, and based on the 2015 novel of the same name by Camille DeAngelis. A story of first love between Maren, a young woman learning how to survive on the margins of society, and Lee, an intense and disenfranchised drifter, as they meet and join together for a thousand-mile odyssey which takes them through the back roads, hidden passages and trap doors of Ronald Reagan's America. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.

In early April 2019, it was announced that Kajganich would adapt DeAngelis's 2015 novel for the screen, and that the film would be directed by Antonio Campos. In late January 2021, it was announced that Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell were attached to star in the film now to be directed by Guadagnino. By late May, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, and Jessica Harper rounded out the film's cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in late July. Filming took place in Aberdeen, Chillicothe, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Lebanon, Ohio, as well as Maysville, Kentucky.

The film stars an ensemble cast that includes Russell, Chalamet, Rylance, Stuhlbarg, Holland, Sevigny, Green, and Harper. The superb performances from Russell and Chalamet are as memorable as Guadagnino's vision of something akin to hell. Russell works an abundance of meaning into a very small space, so we at least recognize this doomed, erstwhile teenager as all too human, and appropriately dangerous.

It’s a well written tale of two lost souls dancing between idyllic naiveté and sociopathic violence. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. Guadagnino's love and respect for the natural world as it frames and moves characters is palpable and on full display, the film heightened by superb performances and Guadagnino's incredible direction. If a portion of American cinema is going to remain devoted to violence, it could learn a lot by revisiting Guadagnino's thoughtfulness. The movie is just as free, experimental, and unsure of itself as its main characters are, and thus fits like a glove. One of Guadagnino's most resonant notions in the film is that everyone confronts mortality in his or her own way. Incredibly beautiful, of course (you may have heard that Guadagnino movies are famous for their landscapes), but it's not "just" beautiful. Guadagnino's film, full of striking cutaways to the burning-sun horizon and the harsh landscape's solitary creatures, comes to operate at an overpoweringly chilling remove. Achingly evocative of a time when American independent cinema had the courage to continue investing in complex and morally ambiguous films and an indisputable masterpiece of American independent cinema. The film is an arena for apathy, both in regard to the characters' depictions and their subjective emotions.

Simon says Bones and All receives:

Also, see my reviews for Suspiria (2018) and I Am Love (Io sono l'amore).