Taylor Russell

Bones and All

31/11/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Every director is entitled to at least one mistake. In the case of Luca Guadagnino, the mistake was to follow the sublime Call Me By Your Name with a muddled, pretentious remake of Dario Argento’s classic horror, Suspiria. So it’s gratifying to report that Bones and All takes a significant step back in the right direction. With a screenplay by David Kajganich, based on a novel by Camille DeAngelis, it’s a film that recklessly crosses several genres but ultimately emerges as something quite unique – part horror film, part road movie, part love story – and the various components work together brilliantly.

We’re on the shabby backstreets of Reagan’s America in the mid 1980s. Maren (Taylor Russell), an eighteen-year-old high schooler, lives with her father (played by André Holland), who keeps her under a tight rein, even locking her in her bedroom every night. But after receiving an invite to a slumber party, she sneaks out to join up with three friends for an evening of gossip, booze and makeovers. It’s all going swimmingly until, without warning, the fun stops…

After what happens, Maren and her dad are obliged to skip town and, shortly thereafter, Maren wakes up to finds herself abandoned. Her father has walked out, leaving only some money and a Walkman, with a lengthy explanation for his actions captured on cassette tape. Maren discovers that she is an ‘eater’ – someone who is drawn to feasting on human flesh, a condition passed onto her by her mother, who abandoned her when she was a baby. Maren decides her only option is to go in search of her mom in the hope of finding a solution to her problems.

En route, she encounters Sully (a deliciously creepy performance from Mark Rylance). He’s a fellow eater, who has managed to track her down by her familiar smell. Sully offers her companionship and claims he can be her protector, her guide to this unfamiliar new world – but, despite spending some time with him, even sharing one of his ‘meals’, she grabs the opportunity to escape at her earliest opportunity and goes on with her journey. And then she meets another of her kind, Lee (Timothée Chalamet), with whom she finds she has much more in common. The two of them bond and decide to travel together. As they drive across country, they begin to wonder if there is any escape from their current situation.

Calm, languorous and set against the epic scenery of the American West, Bones and All is an incredibly compelling story, by turns romantic and repugnant. Make no mistake, the feeding scenes are explicitly visceral and can be hard to take – the film’s 18 certificate is there for a reason. The central allegory of the story suggests many themes, but to my mind the key one is addiction. The more Maren and Lee strive to break out of the life they’ve begun to hate, the more circumstances conspire to pull them back into its tenacious grip.

Those who find gore unsettling may prefer to give this one a wide berth, but if you can tolerate some carnage, there’s so much here to admire. I can honestly say I’ve never seen another film quite like this one – and I’m fascinated to discover where Guadagnino goes next.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Waves

17/01/20

We’re barely a fortnight into 2020 and accomplished films continue to spill onto our cinema screens. Where are all the duds? There have to be some, right?

Waves is a powerful story, told in an unashamedly bravura style by writer/director Trey Edward Shults, whose last film was the underrated It Comes at Night. He focuses here on the lives of a middle-class black family living in Florida. The opening scenes set out Shults’ stall in no uncertain manner, as the camera swoops and spins giddily around the interior of a crowded vehicle, as exuberant as the laughing passengers.

We are looking in on scenes from the life of Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jnr), a handsome  high school pupil preparing for a bright future at college. Driven by his ambitious father, Ronald (Sterling K Brown), and his more pragmatic stepmother, Catherine (Reneé Elise Goldsberry), Tyler is an active member of his school’s wrestling team and spends every spare moment he can training hard for an upcoming competition. 

But Tyler harbours a secret – he’s actually suffering from a serious muscle injury. Doctors have warned him to refrain from exercise, but he continues to push himself and regularly raids his father’s supply of powerful painkillers in order to make it through each bout. To add to his woes, his girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Donie), has missed her period and, as the weeks pass, is unsure of what she wants to do about the situation. As the pressure steadily builds, Tyler finds himself spiralling, inevitably, out of control…

The film’s second half abruptly switches its attention to Tyler’s younger sister, Emily (Taylor Russell), who has lived in her brother’s shadow for most of her life. When she meets up with shy, gawky Luke (Lucas Hedges), the ensuing romance helps her to blossom and she starts to discover her own identity. Then she finds out that Luke, one of her brother’s teammates, has his own demons to face…

While the story itself is not exactly undiscovered territory, the telling is extraordinary. Shults uses his cameras to reflect the different moods, employing vivid colours, eerie flashbacks, even sometimes changing the ratio of the screen to enhance the various emotions of the piece, aided by an evocative soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. 

Shults learned his craft as a cinematographer on the films of Terence Malick and some of the great director’s influences are apparent here but, in fairness, the film never strays into the glacial emptiness that typifies Malick’s recent output – and is all the better for that. 

Waves is an affecting meditation on love, loss and the process of healing. While Harrison Jnr has the showier role, it’s Russell who really impresses here, as her formerly repressed character gradually emerges from its cocoon and takes flight.

The film won’t be for everyone. Those who prefer a director who reigns in the visual tricks may find the impressionistic cinematography too intrusive. But, for those who admire the director’s art, Waves is a brilliant example of how it’s done.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney