MATURE CONTENT WARNING! (cannibalism)
Bones and All
Starring: Taylor Russel, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance
My Rating: ★★★★ 1/2
Bones and All is the story of a young woman named Maren (Taylor Russel), who embarks on a journey to discover herself after her father abandoned her. On this odyssey, she meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet), a drifter. Despite their love for each other, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts, in which they face challenges to determine whether their love will survive.
Maren is a cannibal. Ever since she was a child, she’s had this insatiable urge. After an incident at a sleepover, Maren’s father leaves her to fend for herself. He left her a tape explaining how he discovered she unintentionally killed her babysitter after taking a bite out of her. As Maren first attempts to manage her unquenchable hunger for human flesh, she boards a bus to Ohio. There she meets Sully (Mark Rylance), another “eater” like herself. Sully carries with him a rope of braided hair from his victims, implying that he has been functioning that way for decades. Upon their first interaction, Maren is bothered by Sully and manages to escape after a disturbing encounter.
After fleeing, she meets Lee at a convenience store. She immediately recognizes Lee as an “eater” because Sully briefly trained her to smell their kind. From that point onward, they fall in love with each other. Bones and All is a shocking story of an existence meant to be isolating and the fight against expectations and instincts.
After watching Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino, I found his directing style fascinating and beautiful. Especially in Bones and All, the contrast of the brutal subject matter with the softness of the directing put me in a trance. I found this film shocking and raw, yet somehow delicate and fragile. It was also lonely and tragic but still beautiful. Please remember that Bones and All is INCREDIBLY graphic and deals with heavy subject matter. It will make you experience extreme discomfort, but it is undeniably worth viewing.