by James Mottram

When Camille DeAngelis published her novel Bones and All in 2015, the reaction was overwhelmingly favourable. Critics called it a metaphor for female sexuality, although the real question might be why did a vegan author write a book about cannibals? To use her own words, it’s “deliciously perverted”, which might just be what drew Italian director Luca Guadagnino to take on this YA coming-of-ager, set in 1980s Midwest America. It might be a about characters compelled to feed on human flesh, but Guadagnino dismissed this early on.

“I didn’t even really put it at the centre of my imagination, the idea of the cannibalism,” he explains. “The idea of disenfranchisement, abandonment, loneliness, of finally meeting the other in your otherness and finding love… that was what motivated me. And the infrastructure of this world. This America, this really abandoned America, that is hostile, and at the same time, benign to this creature that we’re telling the story of. All of that was important to me.”

The big selling point for Bones and All, of course, is Guadagnino’s reunion with Timothée Chalamet, the actor whose career exploded when he starred in the Italian’s 2017 film Call Me by Your Name. It won him an Oscar nomination, playing Elio, a teenager who explores his sexuality with an older male student. While there was talk of a sequel, that idea was abandoned when allegations surfaced about the private life of Chalamet’s co-star Armie Hammer.

Instead, Guadagnino and Chalamet pivoted towards twisted road movie Bones and All, a film that’s only likely to increase the mania around the 26 year-old actor. The same might be said for his co-star, Taylor Russell, who previously featured in the 2019 film Waves. Russell, who won the Marcello Mastroianni award for Best Young Actor at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in Bones and All, is sensational as Maren, a youngster living with an inexplicable desire to break the last taboo.

Chalamet, who plays Lee – another cannibal that Maren meets and falls for – had seen Waves, and immediately wanted to work with Russell. “Not that the pressure was off, because it felt there was a lot to wrestle with,” says Chalamet, comparing the experience to his time on Call Me by Your Name, “but I felt Taylor had the Elio responsibility this time. Maren is who the audience is connecting with and rooting for and feeling for.”

True enough: Maren is our guide through this world, from being abandoned by her father (André Holland) to becoming entwined with the equally troubled Lee. “The specificity of how they fall in love is so great,” Russell says. “Because they’re such loners anyways, it’s all heightened – all the senses that they go through together. Which is, I think, what we love about movies like Badlands.”

Terrence Malick’s classic tale of two lovers with blood on their hands is clearly an influence. “They’re in a very precarious situation there,” says Russell. “And it’s not so dissimilar from this.”

Bones and All – the title is a reference to the ultimate act of cannibal consumption – also sees Maren encounter the older Sully (Mark Rylance), another flesh-eater who becomes obsessed with her. “He’s a nice mysterious character, isn’t he?” grins Rylance, the British actor famed for his Oscar-winning turn in Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. “Things… they don’t revolve around him. But he has a profound effect on the main characters, doesn’t he?”

Rylance crafted a typically eclectic character – basing the voice on the accent of James Dickey, the poet and author of Deliverance. “He had a beautiful southern Georgian dialect,” he says. “I do a gentle version of it.” He also raided a vintage store for the trinkets that adorn his costume, like feathers and pin badges. “That made me feel like ‘Oh, Mark is looking for Sully everywhere,’” remarks Guadagnino. “Sublime. Incredible. Such a great artist.”

For Chalamet, this reunion with his Call Me by Your Name director was profound. He also felt safe, with Guadagnino paring back the sex and violence. “I think it’s the mark of a true auteur and experienced director that he didn’t feel the need to [go]: ‘This will get eyes!’ or something. But he felt, actually ‘we can do without that’.” Adds Russell: “There’s a purity in it when you watch it. That feeling can come across in these moments that feel gentle instead of it being the full breadth of physicality that could have been there.”

Rylance concurs. “There’s so much implied, compared to the screenplay,” he says, pointing out how “two or three murders have been removed” from the original script. “I think they realised that once they’ve done the initial murder, we would just imagine what these two people were. You almost forget when you’re watching the film.”

While Guadagnino is no stranger to horror – his last film was the 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, filled with scenes of bone-cracking, body-mangling grossness – he’s not one for going overboard with gore. The cannibal sequences, as arresting as they are, don’t dominate the movie. “It’s as restrained as possible,” the director says. “And it’s more about the behaviour than the actual shock value. And the consequences of it.” In his eyes, Bones and All is not really a horror movie at all. “It’s a love story. It’s a dark fable.”

The subject of cannibalism, notes Rylance, means “it’s got a lot of the Grimms fairy tale aspect, of it being a problem that is disgusting and horrific to people. And yet, these two young actors are very beautiful, and very gentle. Taylor’s pretty constant in the film. And is loving… I guess she opens up as well. But Timothée [as Lee] is more guarded when you first meet him, and Jimmy Dean-like in his ways, ranging about, and you see him really soften, blossoming with her. I thought that was very, very beautiful.”

Given all this, Chalamet’s army of young fans may likely flock to cinemas to see a film that has ‘cult movie’ written all over it. Chalamet is split on what it means, though. “[There’s a] hopeful reading in the movie – without giving anything away – that love can be something that rescues you and lifts you up,” he says. “But I also like the other interpretation – again, without giving too much away – that love can lift you ultimately to sort of crush you too, because sometimes those demons remain.”

Bones and All is in cinemas on November 24, 2022

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