Review of Bones and All (2022) by Nickthecritick — 29 Nov 2022

Perhaps Guadagnino's most experimental film, a strange, imperfect, disharmonious work that hybridizes different genres - melò, horror, road movie - with abrupt leaps of tone, as if they were pieces of different films stitched together.

The first 3/4 of the films in their imperfection are something astounding: a rough road movie, a horror, a coming of age a love story, but, above all, a very citationist film that pays homage to the best of some of my favorite directors ever and therefore takes me by the throat. We find Van Saant (the film oozes "My Private Own Idaho" from every pore), we find blatant quotes from Kathryn Bigelow's masterpiece "Near Dark": cannibals, like Bigelow's vampires, have no alternatives, they live in a world who does not accept them and therefore they meet and form a community. The cinematography is spot on and very reminiscent of Terrence Malick's "Badlands". The director makes good use of Von Trier-like shaky camera movements (especially in the side tracking shots which are short and very fast).

The editing is truly hyper-experimental at times: it interrupts a scene in mid-suddenly only to come back to it a few seconds later. Everything often happens very (perhaps too much?) quickly and with a fleeting glance. Going back to the point, for the first 3/4 the film is breathtakingly beautiful: magnetic and imperfect like a Joy Division song.The genres are mixed without ever getting bored, the apparent sweetness given by the combination road movie + romantic coming of age drama is well balanced and dampened by truly ferocious horror moments: the meeting of the protagonist with her mother is chilling (there Guadagnino mentions himself bringing to mind a scene from his Suspiria).

It is the last act instead that which convinced me a little less: I found it too fast and hasty, for me it would have taken 20-30 minutes more to explore the figure of Sully and show us how he gets there to the two youngsters. It would have been a necessary choice to remove the handbrake in the finale and push this last act to the end: right down to the bone, as the title says.

I understand who might think that it is not Guadagnino's best film but it is a courageous (not at all pimping), romantic and dark work based on a difficult subject and which remains etched in the mind long after viewing.