Guadagnino first taps into these feelings when Maren briefly crosses paths with an eccentric cannibal named Sully (Rylance), who sports a ponytail under a feathered hat, refers to himself in third person, and sniffs our young runaway protagonist from half a mile away. It’s also rife with simmering feelings of queer self-hatred, with an obvious but effective parallel with the movie’s version of cannibalism - or “eaters” - for whom consumption and indulgence can be marked by shame. This journey, its meetings, and its pitstops serve as a proxy for a tale of self-discovery, one punctuated by the same kind of loneliness and romance Guadagnino brought to Call Me By Your Name. Unable to listen to it all at once, she digests his audio confession in increments on the road while taking buses and hitching rides in the hopes of tracking her mother down and finding answers about herself. A few months after they move to Maryland under new identities, he reluctantly abandons Maren in the middle of the night, leaving her with nothing more than her birth certificate - which contains scant details about her estranged mother, who she barely remembers - and a Walkman with a cassette tape explaining his actions, and revealing parts of her bloodthirsty past he’d long kept hidden. When she returns home covered in blood, Frank’s lack of surprise (and the quickness and routineness with which he has her pack up and leave) tells us this has happened before.
His reasons become all too clear when Maren sneaks out to a sleepover and, during a moment of physical and emotional intimacy with her classmate, gets carried away and takes a bite out of her finger. It begins unassumingly in Virginia in the 1980s, where mixed-race teenage newcomer Maren (Russell) acclimates to her new school and to her wealthier white friends, despite attempts from her father, Frank (André Holland), to keep her sheltered.
Led by stellar performances from, among others, Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, and Mark Rylance, it feels fully lived-in even in its most languid moments, resulting in a work that’s both sweeter and funnier than you’d expect, but no less heart-wrenching. A cannibal road trip movie that fleshes out its mythology akin to vampires or werewolves, it’s a poetic piece of American Gothic horror with unexpected turns rooted in rigorous character drama. Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All is lush, romantic, and brutal.
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