A big, skull-shaped storm cloud looms over our leads in the poster for Bones and All, Luca Guadagnino’s highly anticipated next film after Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria. It’s practically the only hint so far that the movie might be a touch more monstrous than the sweet, roadtrip romance story we’re getting otherwise.
Starring Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name muse Timothée Chalamet and Escape Room star Taylor Russell, Bones and All arrives in Australian cinemas on November 23. It’s already been spoiled for us that the film is about young cannibal lovers on the run, so now you have to get spoiled too.
The dark romance is based on an acclaimed novel by Camille DeAngelis, set in 1980s America where “greed is good” and so perhaps two bloodthirsty young drifters can justify their destruction of those around them. Both without a family, Maren (Russell) and Lee (Chalamet) find security and validation in one another.
“You don’t think I’m a bad person?” he cries in the trailer below, and she whispers back that “all I think is that I love you.” Considering that the film’s score comes from David Fincher collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, we suspect we’re not in for a typical coming-of-age odyssey.
A few of Guadagnino’s dependable stars from his previous films return here as characters Lee and Maren meet along the way, like Michael Stuhlbarg and Jessica Harper: Spielberg favourite Mark Rylance has a major role, and Chloë Sevigny, André Holland, and Francesca Scorsese (no prizes for guessing who her dad is) will appear too.
Similiarly to Guadagnino’s well-loved teen series We Are Who We Are, Bones and All seems to have a lot of love for messed up, too-cool-for-school youngsters left to parent themselves in the absence of loving adults. According to the plot description, “all roads lead back” to the character’s “terrifying pasts”, so we hope they can eat their way through whatever they find there.
