Psat at the cinema a little too quietly, Bones and All is by no means a minor title in Luca Guadagnino’s varied filmography (also Silver Lion for direction at the 2022 Venice Film Festival). The chance to find out is given tonight by Rai 4, which at 9.20pm will broadcast this second collaboration between the director and Timothée Chalamet after the success – yes – of Call me by your name.
Bones and all on Rai 4 tonight 15 October, plot and cast of Luca Giadagnino’s film
In a small town in Virginia, Maren spends a restless adolescence. During a party with some friends, he bites and almost cuts off the finger of one of them. As she returns home still covered in blood, her father Frank quickly moves her to Maryland. Shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Frank abandons her, leaving her testimony of other similar incidents that had happened to her as a child, symptom of cannibalism.
Thus the girl arrives in Minnesotabirthplace of her mother who abandoned her as a child. She meets Sully, a cannibal who takes her in and introduces her to her true nature. However, Maren escapes shortly after: to Indiana she meets the young Lee by chance, who decides to accompany her on her journey across the United States, in search of her parent. The two, both “eaters”, soon fall in love.
The review of the film by Luca Guadagnino
With Bones and AllGuadagnino returns to tell a coming-of-age novel about self-discovery. The narrative is guided by Maren’s curious yet fragile gaze, as happened to Elio in Call me by your name. At the same time, from the first scenes, a melancholic and dark atmosphere dominates in recognizable situations (school desks, parties, the amusement park), far from the summer idyll of the previous film. Cannibalism becomes a metaphor for all the difficulties in adolescence in dealing with one’s apparently “monstrous” sides.
As a tale of young people on the fringes of society, the film also comes close to similar titles centered around vampires, in particular The darkness is approaching And Lost Boys. The supernatural element as a metaphor for those who feel different, lost and without ties. The discovery of others like her helps the protagonist to accept herself and grow, on a path that however remains full of curves. The journey at the center of the story is therefore above all internal, in an immediate reflection between the boundless spaces of the United States and the equally profound spaces of Maren and Lee’s soul.
In the more horror passages, Guadagnino does not hold back in showing the crudest details, however dried of any splatter effect, towards a excruciating introspection. It starts from the bodies of the protagonists to access the analysis of desire and passion, in all its forms and expressions. The common thread that unites his latest works, from the young people of Challengers to adults of Queer.
Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) in a scene from “Bones and all”.
The cast of the film
After having achieved international fame thanks to Call me by your nameTimothée Chalamet put his body and soul into daring challenges, including this one Bones and Allalways representing an ideal of masculinity far from the toxicity of machismo. Recently, we saw it in the saga of Dunes and in A Complete Unknownwhere he plays Bob Dylan. In January, he will return to theaters as Marty Supremeping-pong player in New York in the 1950s (and there is already talk of a new Oscar nomination).
Playing Maren is the surprise Taylor Russell, Marcello Mastroianni winner at the 2022 Venice Film Festivalawarded to the best emerging actor/actress of each edition. Alongside them, in a small role we find Michael Stuhlbarg, who worked with Guagagnino in Call me by your name and in After the Huntin cinemas from 16 October. Mark Rylance (The Bridge of Spies) plays Sully; Finally, Chloë Sevigny (We are Who Are) is the protagonist’s mother.