Coming-of-age romance and horror intertwine in ‘Bones and All’
JANUARY 1ST 2023 | by EMILY HAHN
LEE, PLAYED BY TIMOTHEE CHALAMET (LEFT), AND MAREN, PLAYED BY TAYLOR RUSSELL (RIGHT).
A Camille DeAngelis’ novel takes on a new form, the big screen. Director Luca Guadagnino teams up once again with actor Timothée Chalamet (the two worked together previously on the coming-of-age Call Me By Your Name), this time for an unusual hybrid that intertwines coming-of-age romance and horror to make Bones and All.
The film takes you through a love story in the 1980’s between two cannibals, Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet), referred to in the film as ‘eaters’. The plot follows Maren, a sheltered young woman, who is forced to fend for herself and find her place in the world as an outsider with a taste for flesh. Feeling isolated with the world, she began looking for answers, which sends her on a trek across the American Midwest in attempt to find out who she really is.
Encountering multiple viewpoints along the way, things take a turn when she crosses paths with a young drifter named Lee (Timothée Chalamet), an outcast with similar taste. Perhaps their individual trauma and troubled pasts bonded the two together. From there, the two banded together as the film essentially becomes a double-edged coming-of-age story. Throughout their journey along the backroads of America, the focus pin points in on two similar people trying to make sense of the world and themselves together, both parts compelling and haunting.
In spite of the subject matter, Bones and All is a beautiful film, featuring eye catching cinematography on 35mm film from DP Arseni Khachaturan, that beautifully encapsulates the 1980s American Midwest, along with a fantastic score that holds its own by setting the mood and driving the emotion. Bones and All balances heartfelt emotion with brutal moments, finding a way to make the two, that seeming don’t mesh, work together in harmony.
You can watch the film playing in theaters, or stream on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. Watch the trailer below.