We may never know how some films manage to not only take on the most out-there, sensitive, and downright grueling creative tasks imaginable, but do so in a way that entirely knocks it out of the park. But the team behind Bones & All, the upcoming coming-of-age romance film from director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name), seems to have done just that, with the disturbingly subversive yet heartfelt flick earning some big points with its first reviews.
Bones & All stars Taylor Russell as Maren Yearly, a teenage girl who happens to be a cannibal and who is abandoned by her father on her 18th birthday, leaving behind tapes and materials that may lead her to her birth mother, who she has never met before, and who is also a cannibal. Along the way, she meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet), another teenage cannibal, and the two venture off on a road trip across America.
Leila Latif of IndieWire gave the film a score of A-, noting its complex narrative on love and morality that finds its way into the hearts of its viewers, however strangely it may do so.
“That fluidity brings even higher, and more compelling, moral stakes to the central duo. Their options are broadly limited to eating humans, committing suicide, or locking themselves away; beyond that they are adrift, not knowing what purpose they could serve themselves or one another. This a love story of two people traveling through a world while being told ‘the world of love wants no monsters in it.’”
Leila Latif via IndieWire
Collider‘s Brian Formo praised the film’s worldbuilding and chemistry between the two leads, without which this particular marriage of nuances may not have worked.
“The world-building is the bones of the story. The bones are eerie, and the flesh is twee. It’s a mix that doesn’t always work but the chemistry between Russell and Chalamet is so strong that each cameo (including Stuhlbarg’s) feels extraneous and disruptive.”
Brian Formo via Collider
And Damon Wise of Deadline, despite finding the ending to be lackluster, had nothing but good things to say about the film’s thematic depth.
“There is a lot — no pun intended — to chew on here, about people who feel disenfranchised, unloved and unwanted. The ending may disappoint, but it also ensures the film will have a life as an imperfect masterpiece, the best kind of cult film, after all.”
Damon Wise via Deadline
Bones & All will release in the United States on Nov. 23.