Bones and All: Movie Review

Cast: Taylor Russell, Timothee Chalamet, Mark Rylance

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Meshing a young adult love affair with a cannibal story may sound like an unusual mix, but Luca Guadagnino's Bones and All plays with familiar story beats while threading a slightly unconventional tale.

Russell plays Maren, a loner who is abandoned by her father at the age of 18, and gets it into her head to track down her missing mother. Forced on the run after an incident at a sleepover (one of the pre-titles best shocks), Maren believes she's alone in the world, her thrust for human flesh an affliction she alone suffers from.

However, when she's sought out by the oddball Sully (Rylance, in a creepy character turn) who professes to share her desires, she finds her world opening up to possibilities. It's a feeling further enhanced when she chances across Chalamet's apparent drifter Lee, another of her kind.

As the two bond, they begin to grow closer as their desires increase.

Bones and All is very much a road trip relationship movie that embraces some of its more shocking moments and presents them as part of a norm, rather than in a salacious light.

Russell makes great fist of the dilemma she faces with her hunger, and Chalamet proves to be an enticing foil to her as she comes of age in the world around her.

But unfortunately, it feels as if Guadagnino spends much of the film looking for an ending - and when it comes, it feels out of leftfield and utterly unsatisfying. Sure, there's a Bonnie and Clyde vibe here as they steal and devour their way in and out of trouble and while Guadagnino crafts some beautifully constructed shots together, there's not as much emotional depth as you'd want here.

Granted, there's the feeling Maren is holding back and Lee is uncertain about life in general, but Bones and All rarely progresses beyond plodding, offering little to entice as it treads soullessly on.

There are moments that engross, but unfortunately Bones and All is not a full three course meal - it's a snackable story that could have had some of the fat trimmed off its meat-cute couple and narrative to make a totally satisfying experience.