‘Life is never dully with Sully...’
Luca Guadagnino is a filmmaker beloved to many mainly due to the massive success of Call Me by Your Name but as I haven’t seen that film I know the Italian director from his excellent 2018 remake of Suspiria. Bones and All saw Guadagnino reunite with Call Me by Your Name star Timothee Chalamet and I really don’t know what to make of it…
Maren (Taylor Russell) is some kind of cannibal vampire hybrid with the ability to sniff out other cannibal vampires. After she attempts to bite off her friend’s finger at a sleepover, Maren goes on the run where she meets a creepy older man (Mark Rylance) with the same affliction/hunger as herself and later Lee (Chalamet) – a manic pixie dream boy who joins the ever-increasing ranks of ‘sexy vampires’ that have proliferated throughout cinematic history.
I’m not entirely sure what Bones and All is. A horror film? A love story? All of the above? It’s difficult to say. All the elements of a good film are here. The performances are great. For all I think Chalamet is overrated, he is solid here and he shares an authentic chemistry with Russell who carries the film. Elsewhere, Rylance is suitably deranged and creepy and Guadagnino knows how to create a memorable visual set piece. The violence here is frantic and brutal and the fact that it is used sparingly only makes it more effective. And yet…
I liked Bones and All. Parts of it I really liked. But as a whole, the film was only partly successful for me. I didn’t buy into the relationship between Maren and Lee and I guess that’s because this is a film catered towards a younger audience and I am very much an old fat fuck. Still, this is a memorable film. A unique film. And that should always be celebrated.