OUT NOW: Bones and All

Abandoned by her father (André Holland), teenage cannibal Maren (Taylor Russell) goes on the road to find her mother.

On her journey, Maren meets Sully (Mark Rylance), a fellow ‘eater’ who identifies her as kin.

Maren keeps moving and meets another eater, Lee (Timothée Chalamet).

The pair continue their trek to find Maren’s family.

 
On the way, Maren and Lee begin to fall in love.

Can they make a life together? 

I need to watch more of Luca Guadagnino’s movies. I’ve only seen this one and his reimagining of Suspiria, and I am missing something. Maybe he's just not a good fit for horror?

There is something off about Bones and All at a fundamental level, and I cannot put my finger on it.

For the first 15ish minutes, as we are slowly introduced to Maren, her cannibalism and her abandonment, it is an involving experience.

And then Mark Rylance shows up.

I had seen some chatter online which should have been a warning, but nothing prepared me for the screeching brake that this actor puts on the movie.

When Rylance makes his entrance, the movie goes off its rhythm - it feels like he wandered over from a Ronald Dahl novel, with his accent, his physicality and the literal feather in his cap.

He never quite syncs with the movie - in his first scene, that lends his interactions with Taylor Russell a certain tension, but the longer he is on-screen, it just feels like a collection of performance tics.

His performance is so broad and specific that it feels like a con, but while he does prove to be malevolent, his performance stays the same.

Whenever he shows up, the movie grinds to a halt. And that’s a problem because he is the antagonist.

He is so discordant to the movie that I started to focus on the performances of everyone else. 
Is Taylor Russell convincing as a teenager? Is Chalamet emotionally connected to any scene he is in? Do I know what acting is?

Russell is a solid centre of the movie but it feels like the movie needs more fire at certain points - her reunion with her grandmother is awkward but there is a moment where the character explodes but it does not feel real.

Fundamentally, Russell conveys intelligence and maturity - and that butts up against the character every time the film reminds you that she is meant to be a teenager. Russell seems too together and knowing to really convince. 

I was a little flippant earlier about Chalamet - he has a gangly, off-kilter physicality which works for the character, but he is kinda just a black hole.

As an outsider/drifter he works, but when the movie tries to humanise him, it never registers.
Chalamet and Russell are not terrible together but the chemistry never comes together.

I can buy them as travelling companions, but I felt no sense of deeper connection, or even lust.
Because the love story is not working, it ends up feeling empty and listless. It all amounts to a big heap of nothing.

I do not know what to focus on in terms of other aspects of the film, because what it is lacking is so fundamental to the movie’s success.