Maren says, I don’t know whether to cry, or scream, or laugh, or what. and this pretty much sums my experience of Bones And All. The experience is like witnessing a doped version of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. Imagine Micheal Stuhlbarg uttering that beautiful monologue from Call Me… after getting stoned. The way the eerieness blends with the gentleness in the movie is like the pairing of chromosomes during synapsis. And the music aids so much in this process. And of course, the visuals are great as always with Luca’s works. It again interestingly integrates a raw and realistic tone like what you see in a movie like A Florida Project, or this year’s aftersun for example with a poetic and cinematic tone. I think the way a Luca Guadagnino movie opens is one of the beautiful things out there in today’s cinema. We have a set of lovely canvases with power lines painted on them at the start of Bones and All, which sets up the stage for the initial scenes.
The scenes that were gross and almost made me close my eyes were weirdly poetic. Look at the scene where the camera shifts from a body of an old woman being eaten to a series of photo frames of hers, kind of representing her entire life and memories being consumed. Almost, a ritualistic touch like what the ancient Egyptians did with dead people. How do you turn your eyes away from that last scene and still immerse yourself in the intensity. How fair is it to make you want to close your eyes away from the visual poetry!
The performances are superlative as expected. The creepy Mark Rylance follows the characters like a metaphor to their inner instinct, a constant reminder to the way of life itself, their core that they can’t run away from. Taylor Russell is superb as a representative of gateway to the humanity. The peach boy becomes the peach himself. And for those of you who felt you wanted to just the eat the peach boy off the screen when you saw Call Me… or any subsequent movies of his, Well Luca says, Be My Guest!
Cinema Paradesio 