Bones and All

Bones and All is a 2022 romantic horror film directed by Luca Guadagnino from a screenplay by David Kajganich, based on the 2015 novel Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis. Set in the late 1980s, the film stars Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as a pair of young cannibals who develop feelings for one another on a road trip across the United States. Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, David Gordon Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, and Mark Rylance appear in supporting roles.

Bones and All had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2022, where it won the Silver Lion for best direction and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Russell. The film was released theatrically in the United States on November 18, by United Artists Releasing, and elsewhere by Warner Bros. Pictures, with the exception of Italy, where it was distributed by Vision Distribution. The film received positive reviews, with critics praising the performances of Russell, Chalamet and Rylance, Guadagnino's direction, the cinematography, score, and fusion of genres. However, it underperformed at the box office, grossing $15.2 million against a production budget of $16–20 million.

Plot
In 1988, teenager Maren Yearly eats a classmate's finger after sneaking out to attend a sleepover. Her father Frank, used to her cannibalistic nature since she murdered her babysitter at three years old, promptly relocates them. He abandons her shortly after her eighteenth birthday, leaving behind some money, her birth certificate, and a tape recorder. In a message to his daughter, Frank confides his anguish over Maren's apparent lack of remorse following her incidents over the years and voices his hope that she will someday learn to overcome her urges. Hoping that her mother Janelle, who abandoned her when she was an infant, might provide her with answers, Maren sets out to her birthplace of Minnesota.

At a bus stop, Maren is approached by the eccentric Sully, who introduces himself as a fellow "eater" and teaches her that their kind can identify one another via scent. He leads her into the house of a dying, elderly woman, insisting to a horrified Maren that her hunger will only grow with time. The woman dies the next morning and Maren reluctantly joins Sully in feeding off the corpse, after which he shows her a braided rope he fashioned from the hair of his victims. Unsettled by Sully's obvious interest in taking her under his wing, Maren flees the house.

While shoplifting supplies in Indiana, Maren defends a woman from being harassed by a drunk customer and is helped by a young man named Lee, who lures the customer outside. She later runs into Lee after he's just finished eating the man, and he takes her along after stealing his victim's truck. Lee offers to accompany Maren to Minnesota, and the two embark on a cross-country road trip, becoming romantically involved. During a brief stop at Lee's hometown in Kentucky, they meet with his sister Kayla, who is unaware of her brother's true nature. Maren is intrigued by Lee's refusal to discuss his father's disappearance and his insistence that he not be spotted around town.

At one point, they come across another pair of eaters, and are both disturbed when one of them describes eating a victim "bones and all". After Maren expresses hunger at a local carnival, Lee seduces and kills a male employee while she watches, and the pair feeds off his flesh together. However, upon driving to the man's address, Maren is deeply upset to learn that he had a wife and children, leading to an argument with Lee, who insists that they cannot blame themselves for their nature.

Maren tracks down Janelle's adoptive mother in Minnesota, who informs her that Janelle had willingly committed herself to a psychiatric hospital several years prior. Upon a visit to her mother, Maren is shocked to discover that Janelle has eaten her own hands. A nurse hands Maren a letter from Janelle addressed to her daughter in case they were to ever meet again, in which she proclaims that they are better off dead than living as monsters. Janelle then tries to attack Maren before being restrained. Maren angrily declares to Lee that she refuses to follow her mother's footsteps, and departs while he's asleep. She is soon approached by Sully, who reveals he has been following her, but she again rejects his advances, causing him to become violent. A devastated Lee phones Kayla to tell her that he will be returning home.

Maren eventually finds her way back to Kentucky. She runs into Kayla, who reveals that her alcoholic father had beaten both of his children on the night he went missing and that Lee, initially held as the prime suspect, was cleared of involvement when it was proven that the blood found on him was his own. Maren and Lee rekindle their relationship and decide to resume their travels with no destination in mind. He tells her that he knew his father was an eater when he bit Lee during their scuffle, and tearfully confesses to eating him, as well as to having enjoyed the thrill of it. He asks her if she believes him to be a bad person, but Maren simply declares her love for him. They vow to turn away from cannibalism and lead a normal life together.

After some time, the couple is shown to be happily settled in Michigan, until Maren comes home one day to find that Sully has broken into their apartment. He holds her at knifepoint until Lee arrives, and they manage to kill Sully, though Lee is fatally wounded in the process, and Maren finds a lock of Kayla's hair in Sully's rope. As he lies dying in Maren's arms, Lee pleads for her to love him and eat him "bones and all", to which she reluctantly complies.

Cast

 * Taylor Russell as Maren Yearly
 * Timothée Chalamet as Lee
 * Mark Rylance as Sully
 * André Holland as Frank Yearly, Maren's father
 * Michael Stuhlbarg as Jake, an eater
 * Chloë Sevigny as Janelle Kerns, Maren's mother and an eater
 * David Gordon Green as Brad, a police officer who is a paraphilic cannibal but not an eater
 * Jessica Harper as Barbara Kerns, Maren's adoptive grandmother
 * Jake Horowitz as Lance, a carnival worker who becomes Lee's victim
 * Kendle Coffey as Sherry
 * Anna Cobb as Kayla, Lee's sister

Production
On April 8, 2019, it was announced that David Kajganich would adapt Camille DeAngelis's 2015 novel Bones & All for the screen, and that the film would be directed by Antonio Campos. On January 28, 2021, it was announced that Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet would star in the film, now to be directed by Luca Guadagnino. Chalamet is also a producer on the film. Filming began in May, by which time Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Jessica Harper, Chloë Sevigny, Francesca Scorsese, and David Gordon Green had joined the cast. Shooting took place in Chillicothe, Ohio and Cincinnati, Ohio, which makes it Guadagnino's first film set and made in the United States. Production was affected by break-ins that occurred for some of the crew's cars, leading to a request being submitted to Cincinnati City Council in late June to provide $50,000 for increased security. While there was some criticism over the proposed use of taxpayer funds for a private enterprise, City Council ultimately passed a measure to grant the funds. Filming wrapped in July 2021.

Executive producers are Giovanni Corrado and Raffaella Viscardi. The film is fully financed by Italian companies: The Apartment (a Fremantle group society), 3 Marys, Memo, Tender Stories, Adler, Elafood, Elafilm, Manila, Serfis and Wise.

Guadagnino said that Bones and All is "a very romantic story, about the impossibility of love and yet, the need for it. Even in extreme circumstances." He also said that Chalamet and Russell have "a gleaming power" and are able to "portray universal feelings".

Marketing
The first teaser for Bones and All was released on August 10, 2022. American artist Elizabeth Peyton was commissioned by director Luca Guadagnino to create a painting based on the film. The resulting painting, which she titled "Kiss (Bones and All)", was turned into the film's first poster, which was on display during the Venice International Film Festival, hanging on the 13th-century palace Ca' da Mosto in Venice.

The official poster for the film was released on September 29, 2022, accompanied by its first trailer, which featured a rendition of Leonard Cohen's "You Want It Darker". The song was chosen by lead actor Timothée Chalamet. Safeeyah Kazi of Collider called the trailer "chilling" and "intense". Toussaint Egan of Polygon noted similarities to 1994's crime thriller Natural Born Killers. Allegra Frank of The Daily Beast called it "gorgeously bloody", and praised it for not sharing too much information. Lauren Milici of Total Film described the trailer as Let The Right One In meets Bonnie and Clyde." An extended trailer was released on October 5, 2022.

Music
The film's score was composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and was released on November 18, 2022, on Reznor's label The Null Corporation. In an interview with TheWrap, Reznor and Ross explained that they had extensive discussions with Guadagnino regarding the score, who stated that he wanted it to be "a melancholic elegy, an unending longing. It needs to be a character in the film, a part of the landscape" and requested the use of acoustic guitars to complement the Americana visuals. Reznor and Ross noted how the duo had to experiment with a lot of different sounds before figuring out how the score would sit in the film and explained the creation of the film's original song "(You Made It Feel) Like Home", which stemmed from their personal connections to Russell and Chalamet's characters.

Release
Bones and All had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2022, followed by screenings at the 60th New York Film Festival, 17th Fantastic Fest, 49th Telluride Film Festival, 2022 AFI Fest and 2022 BFI London Film Festival. It had a limited theatrical release beginning on November 18, 2022, before opening wide on November 23.

Theatrical
It is the first film to be acquired by United Artists Releasing and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures following its merger deal with Amazon on March 17, 2022. Vision Distribution released the film in Italy on November 23, 2022, in collaboration with Prime Video and Sky, while Warner Bros. Pictures handled all other international territories through MGM and UAR under a new multi-year pact with the former beginning with this film.

Home media
The film was available on rental PVOD on December 13, 2022. It was released on Blu-ray and DVD, on January 31, 2023, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

Box office
Bones and All grossed $7.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $7.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $15.2 million; it underperformed against a $16–20 million budget.

In its limited opening weekend, Bones and All grossed $120,000 from five theaters. The film expanded alongside Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Strange World, Devotion, and the wide expansion of The Fabelmans, and was projected to gross around $7–9 million from 2,727 theaters over its five-day opening weekend. It made $921,000 on its first day, including $345,000 from Tuesday night previews. It went on to debut to $2.7 million (including $3.5 million over the five days), finishing in eighth. In its third weekend of release, the film made $1.2 million. Its underperformance in the United States was attributed to the increasing decline of interest in prestige films by the general public in a moviegoing environment altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, despite being a film of the horror genre, which saw a surge in popularity during the summer with the releases of Nope, Barbarian and Smile.

The film debuted first at the Italian box office, grossing a total of €109.036 (USD$113,643).

Critical response
Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 71%, including an average three out of five stars.

Reviewing the film following its premiere at Venice, where it received a 10-minute standing ovation, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it an "extravagant and outrageous movie: scary, nasty and startling in its warped romantic idealism" and gave the film a perfect rating of 5 stars. Stephanie Zacharek, in her review for Time, wrote "Bones and All is fastidiously romantic. It's so carefully made, and so lovely to look at, even at its grisliest", praising the direction and cast performances, particularly Russell's. Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, and Mark Rylance have received acclaim for their performances with critics praising Russell and Chalamet's chemistry together. Bloody Disgusting called the duo "profound" and "touching and genuine". The Hollywood Reporter David Rooney also praised the duo, adding their performances are "unforced and underplayed to subtly stirring effect," while calling the film "strangely affecting, even poetic" and commending the direction and cinematography.

Leila Latif in her review for IndieWire wrote, "Bones & All is fundamentally a beautifully realized and devastating, tragic romance which at multiple moments would have Chekhov himself weeping as the trigger is pulled." Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair called it an "alternately plodding and engrossing YA road movie" praising the cast performances, but ultimately found the film unsatisfactory, writing "Bones and All has its merits, but the film is only a decent side dish at the feast of Guadagnino." Writing for Sight & Sound, John Bleasdale described it as "wryly funny, gleefully entertaining and oddly touching" and praised the direction, cinematography, score, and cast performances. Comparing it to Call Me by Your Name, Selina Sondermann wrote "like two sides of the same coin – both cunningly display the love we find for ourselves when we are allowed to truly love another person, bones and all."

"There's real pleasure in Bones and All, an insistent sweetness that somehow both nourishes and cleanses away the horror" wrote Justin Chang in his review for the Los Angeles Times. Clint Worthington Flow of Consequence described the film as "an oddly sweet—presumably a little coppery, too, due to all the blood—alchemy of love and murder" and compared it to Badlands (1973) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), with their tales of "lovers skirting human morality and forging their own sense of paradise with each other". In one unenthusiastic review, Slant's Keith Uhlich criticized the screenplay, direction, and cast performances, concluding: "Straining to be a YA spin on Trouble Every Day, Bones and All barely eclipses Twilight." Mick LaSalle, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, provided a firmly negative review, criticizing the use of gore by saying "the problem is [cannibalism] can’t stay a metaphor" and "Guadagnino has a choice, whether to be an artist or just the maker of artistically rendered, conscientiously realized garbage."