Bones and All had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2022, where it won the Silver Lion for best direction and the Marcello Mastroianni for Russell. The film was released theatrically in the United States on November 18, by United Artists Releasing, and elsewhere by Warner Bros. Pictures, with the exception of Italy, where it was distributed by Vision Distribution. The film received positive reviews, with critics praising the performances of Russell, Chalamet, and Rylance, Guadagnino's direction, the cinematography, score, and fusion of genres. However, it underperformed at the box office, grossing $15.2 million against a production budget of $16–20 million.
Plot
Maren Yearly (Russell) is a teenage girl living in Frederick, Maryland in 1988 under the care of her father Frank (Holland). Having displayed cannibalistic tendencies ever since she murdered her babysitter at the age of three, Maren evaded the consequences of her subsequent incidents over the years thanks to Frank's cover-ups, with the duo often relocating, even as he grew increasingly anguished over his daughter's apparent lack of remorse. He abandons her shortly after her eighteenth birthday (after yet another incident), leaving behind some cash, her birth certificate, and a message on a cassette tape, in which he states his hope that she will someday learn to overcome her urges.
Maren decides to travel to Minnesota, listed as the birthplace of her mother Janelle (Sevigny), who left the family when Maren was still an infant. She is approached at a bus station by an eccentric man named Sully (Rylance), who introduces himself as a fellow "eater" and teaches her that their kind can identify one another via scent. Maren is unsettled by Sully, as he displays creepy mannerisms – especially when he uses his nose to identify scents. Sully informs Maren of his number one rule for their kind—"never eat another eater"—and asks Maren if she can abide by that rule, too. Maren tentatively agrees. Sully tells Maren to follow him, and leads her into a house owned by an elderly woman, who has collapsed and is near death. Maren wants to get the old woman help, but Sully yells at her aggressively and tells her that whatever they "have," it needs to be fed. Upset by the moral dilemma, Maren tearfully states that she needs in a minute and falls asleep in another room. When she wakes up the next morning, the woman has passed away naturally, and Maren witnesses that Sully has already begun feeding on the woman's corpse. Though initially reluctant, Maren also begins to feed. After they are through, Sully expresses interest in taking Maren under his wing and teaching her about their kind, but she is alarmed and unnerved by him and flees the house soon after when Sully is cleaning himself up. As Maren quickly boards a Greyhound bus, she sees Sully staring her down with a deep look of hurt on his face as the bus drives by him.
Maren's heads toward Minnesota and makes a pit stop in Indiana on the way. While shoplifting supplies at a convenience store, Maren witnesses an intoxicated customer harassing a woman. Maren attempts to confront him, before a young man named Lee (Chalamet) intervenes and baits the customer into leaving the store. Maren later spots Lee outside, who is covered in the man's blood, and the two admit to having previously recognized each other's scents. Lee steals his victim's truck and, once the pair spends the night at the man's vacated house, offers to help Maren find her mother. They embark on a cross-country road trip, during which they fall in love. After a brief stay in Lee's hometown in Kentucky, Maren notices his unwillingness to discuss certain aspects of his past, such as his father's absence and the reason why Lee avoids being spotted around town. His younger sister Kayla (Cobb), who is unaware of his true nature, chastises him for his sudden departures and unannounced returns.
Maren tracks down the home of her maternal grandmother, Barbara, who, despite having no prior knowledge of her existence, informs her that Janelle was not her biological child, but was taken in by her and her husband as an infant after being found abandoned behind a police station, and that Janelle voluntarily admitted herself into a psychiatric hospital in Fergus Falls several years before. There, Maren reunites with her mother, who she is shocked to find has self-cannibalized her own hands. A nurse hands Maren a letter that Janelle wrote to her if their paths ever crossed again, which concludes with Janelle's belief that Maren would be better off dead than living as a "monster". Janelle proceeds to attack her daughter before being restrained. Disturbed and unwilling to go down the same path as her mother, Maren leaves while Lee is asleep. She is soon accosted by Sully, who has been stalking her. She again turns down his offer to become companions, causing him to curse at her angrily before departing. Once he realizes Maren is gone, a devastated Lee decides to return home.
Maren eventually makes her way back to Kentucky. She runs into Kayla, who reveals that, on the night of her and Lee's alcoholic, abusive father's disappearance, he beat both of his children before mysteriously vanishing while Kayla ran to get the police. Having been held as the prime suspect, Lee was cleared once it was proven that the blood found on him was his own. Maren and Lee reunite and rekindle their relationship, before deciding to travel westward with no clear destination in mind. Lee tells Maren that he realized his father was also an eater when he bit Lee during their scuffle, and that he hid him away before feeding off him, tearfully confessing to enjoying the thrill the act gave him. He asks Maren if she thinks he is a bad person, but she declares her love for him, and they decide to attempt to live a normal life together.
Sometime later, they are shown to be living happily in Ann Arbor, Michigan as a regular, everyday couple. Maren comes home one day to find that their apartment has been broken into by Sully, who admits he's been following her since her rejection of him earlier. Sully threatens Maren at knifepoint, bemoaning her past rejections and his obsession with her. Lee arrives home, and confronts Sully; a violent altercation ensues. The couple succeeds in killing Sully, but Lee is mortally wounded in the chest during the struggle. As Lee bleeds out in Maren's arms, he pleads for her to eat his body as he dies, "bones and all". Maren frantically refuses at first, but eventually gives in. The scene then cuts to their apartment being cleaned out, and Maren and Lee out in the wilderness together.
Executive producers are Giovanni Corrado and Raffaella Viscardi. The film is fully financed by Italian companies: The Apartment (a Fremantle group society), 3 Marys, Memo, Tender Stories, Adler, Elafood, Elafilm, Manila, Serfis and Wise.[15]
Guadagnino said that Bones and All is "a very romantic story, about the impossibility of love and yet, the need for it. Even in extreme circumstances."[16] He also said that Chalamet and Russell have "a gleaming power" and are able to "portray universal feelings".[16]
Marketing
The first teaser for Bones and All was released on August 10, 2022.[17] American artist Elizabeth Peyton was commissioned by director Luca Guadagnino to create a painting based on the film. The resulting painting, which she titled "Kiss (Bones and All)", was turned into the film's first poster, which was on display during the Venice International Film Festival, hanging on the 13th-century palace Ca' da Mosto in Venice.[18]
The official poster for the film was released on September 29, 2022, accompanied by its first trailer, which featured a rendition of Leonard Cohen's "You Want It Darker".[19][20] The song was chosen by lead actor Timothée Chalamet.[21] Safeeyah Kazi of Collider called the trailer "chilling" and "intense".[22] Toussaint Egan of Polygon noted similarities to 1994's crime thriller Natural Born Killers.[23] Allegra Frank of The Daily Beast called it "gorgeously bloody", and praised it for not sharing too much information.[24] Lauren Milici of Total Film described the trailer as Let The Right One In meets Bonnie and Clyde."[25] An extended trailer was released on October 5, 2022.[26]
The film's score was composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and was released on November 18, 2022, on Reznor's label The Null Corporation.[27][28] In an interview with TheWrap, Reznor and Ross explained that they had extensive discussions with Guadagnino regarding the score, who stated that he wanted it to be "a melancholic elegy, an unending longing. It needs to be a character in the film, a part of the landscape" and requested the use of acoustic guitars to complement the Americana visuals. Reznor and Ross noted how the duo had to experiment with a lot of different sounds before figuring out how the score would sit in the film and explained the creation of the film's original song "(You Made It Feel) Like Home", which stemmed from their personal connections to Russell and Chalamet's characters.[29]
It is the first film to be acquired by United Artists Releasing and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures following its merger deal with Amazon on March 17, 2022. Vision Distribution released the film in Italy on November 23, 2022, in collaboration with Prime Video and Sky,[31] while Warner Bros. Pictures handled all other international territories through MGM and UAR under a new multi-year pact with the former beginning with this film.[32][33][34]
Bones and All grossed $7.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $7.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $15.2 million; it underperformed against a $16–20 million budget.[38][39][40][41]
In its limited opening weekend, Bones and All grossed $120,000 from five theaters.[42] The film expanded alongside Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Strange World, Devotion, and the wide expansion of The Fabelmans, and was projected to gross around $7–9 million from 2,727 theaters over its five-day opening weekend.[43] It made $921,000 on its first day, including $345,000 from Tuesday night previews.[44] It went on to debut to $2.7 million (including $3.5 million over the five days), finishing in eighth.[45] In its third weekend of release, the film made $1.2 million.[46] Its underperformance in the United States was attributed to the increasing decline of interest in prestige films by the general public in a moviegoing environment altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, despite being a film of the horror genre, which saw a surge in popularity during the summer with the releases of Nope, Barbarian and Smile.[47][48]
The film debuted first at the Italian box office, grossing a total of €109.036 (USD$113,643).[49]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 288 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Although its subject matter may be hard to stomach, Bones and All proves a deeply romantic and thought-provoking treat."[50]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[51] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 71%, including an average three out of five stars.[45]
Reviewing the film following its premiere at Venice, where it received a 10-minute standing ovation, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it an "extravagant and outrageous movie: scary, nasty and startling in its warped romantic idealism" and gave the film a perfect rating of 5 stars.[52]Stephanie Zacharek, in her review for Time, wrote "Bones and All is fastidiously romantic. It's so carefully made, and so lovely to look at, even at its grisliest", praising the direction and cast performances, particularly Russell's.[53]Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, and Mark Rylance have received acclaim for their performances with critics praising Russell and Chalamet's chemistry together. Bloody Disgusting called the duo "profound" and "touching and genuine".[54]The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney also praised the duo, adding their performances are "unforced and underplayed to subtly stirring effect," while calling the film "strangely affecting, even poetic" and commending the direction and cinematography.[55]
Leila Latif in her review for IndieWire wrote, "Bones & All is fundamentally a beautifully realized and devastating, tragic romance which at multiple moments would have Chekhov himself weeping as the trigger is pulled."[56]Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair called it an "alternately plodding and engrossing YA road movie" praising the cast performances, but ultimately found the film unsatisfactory, writing "Bones and All has its merits, but the film is only a decent side dish at the feast of Guadagnino."[57] Writing for Sight & Sound, John Bleasdale described it as "wryly funny, gleefully entertaining and oddly touching" and praised the direction, cinematography, score, and cast performances.[58] Comparing it to Call Me by Your Name, Selina Sondermann wrote "like two sides of the same coin – both cunningly display the love we find for ourselves when we are allowed to truly love another person, bones and all."[59]
"There's real pleasure in Bones and All, an insistent sweetness that somehow both nourishes and cleanses away the horror" wrote Justin Chang in his review for the Los Angeles Times.[60] Clint Worthington Flow of Consequence described the film as "an oddly sweet—presumably a little coppery, too, due to all the blood—alchemy of love and murder" and compared it to Badlands (1973) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), with their tales of "lovers skirting human morality and forging their own sense of paradise with each other".[61] In one unenthusiastic review, Slant's Keith Uhlich criticized the screenplay, direction, and cast performances, concluding: "Straining to be a YA spin on Trouble Every Day, Bones and All barely eclipses Twilight."[62]Mick LaSalle, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, provided a firmly negative review, criticizing the use of gore by saying "the problem is [cannibalism] can’t stay a metaphor" and "Guadagnino has a choice, whether to be an artist or just the maker of artistically rendered, conscientiously realized garbage."[63]
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