You remind me of every junkie I ever met. You look like the kind that’s convinced himself he’s got this under his thumb. But you pull on one little thread and . . . but maybe love will set you free, man. Maybe love will set you free.
The simple logline of this movie is that Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell play a pair of young lovers on the run because they are cannibals. I think this might give something of a wrong impression because they aren’t just people who have chosen to be cannibals; they are something else, that the movie is kind of cagey about, and they’re not the only ones out there as we see quite explicitly. But they actually meet because they recognize each other as being these other things, not quite normal human beings. Lest I appear to be making a distinction that would only matter to a psychopath, I’ll just say that I only bring this up because I think it kind of gives a wrong impression of the arc of the film and their characters to give the impression that they’re just young lovers who decide to start eating people.
Anyway, that aside, I have to say that I just really loved this movie. I’m overall a fan of Guadagnino and I have to say that I genuinely think this is my favorite of his movies that I’ve seen. Yeah, I think overall I may like this movie better than Call Me By Your Name (which, now that I think about it, also has a strange connection to the world of cannibalism, “thanks” to Armie Hammer) and I feel like that’s a pretty unique take. But I loved the strange, slow, romantic tone of this movie. It’s a movie that’s too restless to be languid, but too meandering to be melodramatic and I really liked the vibe it ended up with which is sad and strange and hypnotic, but also violent and unapologetic.
I’m in the tank for Chalamet as everyone knows (still probably not going to see Wonka!) and I think he’s up to his usual standards here, giving a really fantastic performance. Taylor Russell is really good and I think she’s more the main character than he is and she carries it. They’re both giving very naturalistic and minimal performances; the characters feel lived in when they meet and their chemistry together is just as natural and unforced and unmelodramatic as their performances. This is a movie with a very romantic feeling. One thing to say about Guadagnino after Call Me By Your Name is that he can conjure a very swoony feeling without allowing it to ever become cheesy or melodramatic and this movie has a lot of that romanticism even though it also has a lot of bloodspraying and cannibalism.
The supporting performances are also excellent and striking. The characters are well-written, even when they only show up for a scene or two. Some of those performances are bigger and broader, but I think it works to put these two very naturalistic and minimal lead performances in this world where it feels like everything else is heightened around them. Mark Rylance is an actor that I have struggled with over the years; I tend to find that he either gives a performance that is perfect down to every single detail in a way that dazzles me with its precision (Bridge of Spies, Dunkirk) or else he’s . . . well, godawful (Ready Player One, Don’t Look Up, The BFG). So I never know what I’m going to get and, to be honest, that’s part of the reason I wanted to see this movie. Chalamet and Guadagnino were the big draws for me, but I was also just intrigued to see how Rylance would fit in this movie. I am gratified to say that he’s put another one in the win column; as another wandering cannibal, Sully, he finds a pitch perfect weirdness and awkwardness in his initial scenes and then when he returns a bit later in the movie, he’s just phenomenal in that scene, swaggering and smiling in a way that’s even more off-putting than he was before. Chloe Sevigny shows up in a one scene role and she absolutely kills it in a performance that is almost entirely non-verbal, a performance of haunted looks and twitches. Michael Stuhlbarg also shows up briefly as another killer on the road and I genuinely didn’t recognize him, not realizing it was him until I saw it in the end credits. And he’s one of my favorite actors! It’s a genuinely weird and transformative performance from him. And I should also mention, even though he’s not particularly good or bad, that director David Gordon Green has a brief appearance here as well. It feels like there’s a joke here about Green and the swath of destruction he’s cut across the horror genre over the last few years, but I can’t figure out a way to elegantly express it. You get it. He’s made some bad horror movies. This is a good one. There’s a joke there somewhere.
Regardless, I just ultimately really loved this movie. I think it’s, like I say, bolstered by a great cast basically all giving fantastic performances and it conjures a strange hypnotic vibe. It’s elegiac and melancholy and also full of chemistry between the actors. Call Me By Your Name was a beautiful romantic poem of a movie; Suspiria was bleak and when it went for horror, it went ugly and brutal. In Bones & All, Guadagnino has managed to graft horror onto that beautiful, poetic style of Call Me By Your Name, not by creating ugly contrasts, but by showing us, strangely, the beauty in the blood letting. A sunset on the prairie burns with the same colors as a spreading pool of life’s blood. A gorgeous movie. 4 stars.
tl;dr – a fantastic cast are at the top of their respective games and this melancholy, swooningly romantic, violent film manages a hypnotic vibe as it unspools a tale of doomed lovers. 4 stars.