10/6/22 - Bones and All (2022) - 6-/10

Metaphors, motivations and machinations get a bit muddled as it moves along, but not enough not to sink your teeth into. The nods toward queer and vegan spurt and sputter, like the gaping chest wound of a downed victim.

Clearer aims and agency, especially of our main character, would have aided the journey as a whole all the much more. In contrast to the source material, not only do we find her aloof in monster hood but separated from the act driving her. We are not treated to her embraces of killing and eating, but rather a bystander who opportunistically pounces on the prescribed juncture.

There is wry, sometimes cynical, humor spread throughout. It lightens the emotional load and allows breaths to come when the body may be tense from the teeth grinding on screen. Rylance is darkly whimsical, but without the backstory followed through from the novel, moves about the film more as a creepy joker than a pivotal plot machination. Still, he is quirky, funny, off-putting and ominous.

Chalemet is at his twinKing finest, adorned in an assorted 80s queer/hipster aesthetic when he isn’t baring his lithe shirtless chest. Much more of a romantic partner than the novel, he is captivating and too-cute-to-boot. His “masculine acting counterpart-to-Kristen Stewart”, with the bashful ambience and tight jawed whisper dialogue, could use some adjustment. Perhaps just constant subtitles would aid understanding of the twined whatnots he coyly exhales.

Even if you can’t make out what the lissom sublimated sexpot is saying, his acting accomplice and main character Taylor Russell , holds sway while coyly huddled in a demure adolescent slumber. She comes of age and manages to take a bite of the screen and your attention, always letting her eyes tell a tale of tortured inner-exertions and straining desires for acceptance.

Guadagnino lets his actors eat, as he so often does, while enveloping them in tragedy, mystery, and open-hearted yearning. I don’t think this is his finest work, but still allowed a mouthful to chew on.