Film Review

Bones and All (2022)

Two young lovers on the road in 1980s America share a horrific secret…

Touching and convincing performances from Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet (both vulnerable but anxious not to show it), and scene-stealing support from the much older Mark Rylance (more flamboyant but equally in need of love), amply compensate for some thematic incoherence in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, based on Camille DeAngelis’s novel.

In 1980s America, teenage Maren (Russell) is at a sleepover with friends, lying under a coffee table with another girl while they chat; Maren eyes the other girl and seems to sniff her, and the atmosphere takes on an erotic charge… until Maren bites her, savagely, before closing her own eyes in rapture.

The mood immediately changes from sensuous languor to panic as Maren’s father (André Holland), learning of the incident when his daughter arrives home, tells her they have to leave, now. Sometime after this (the movie’s timeline is a tad confusing, though it’s not crucially important), Maren’s father abandons her, leaving only her birth certificate, a little money, and a cassette tape…