Rent Bones and All on Amazon Video (paid link) // Buy the book (paid link)
Written by: David Kajganich (screenplay by), Camille DeAngelis (based on the novel by)
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance, André Holland, Michael Stuhlbarg, Chloë Sevigny
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
A young woman embarks on a 1000 mile odyssey through America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether love can survive their otherness.
Verdict
This is such a strange love story. It's a strange movie with an odd vibe, but it's supposed to have an odd feeling. Two people with one thing in common that makes them outcasts find each other. This takes two young adults and makes their feelings of disenfranchisement manifest viscerally. This draws them together while isolating them from the rest of the world. It's a very different movie.
It depends.
Review
From the director of Call Me By Your Name, this has a strange start that generates a lot of questions. It only gets weirder.
Maren's (Taylor Russell) father isolates her from the world. She's at a new high school trying to make friends, and at first this enters what I thought was a dream sequence, but it's real. I wasn't sure what was happening, but this event is the catalyst for answers.
Maren's father has been struggling to care for her. He can't keep running, but he leaves her a note. We don't know the why, and we never find that out, but it's not as bizarre as all of the answers I imagined.
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| Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell play Lee, Maren |
The strange aspect of this is how Maren runs into other people like her. She thought she was the only one for years, and now she discovers that's not true. I don't even know what to think about this movie as it's such a bizarre context. This doesn't provide much explanation for this world and these unique inhabitants. I have to imagine this is drawing parallels to people that feel like outcasts, but this is a bizarre situation where you can't excuse what makes these people outliers.
Mark Rylance plays a sort of mentor. His character is so bizarre, but credit to Rylance for the execution. Maren quickly realizes that this guy is too odd, and she bails. Having never met anyone like her, she meets two in a week. Maren and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) become fast friends, bound by their unique appetites. Maren is new to this life, and she's trying to adjust. She has to reconcile her intrinsic needs with the method of how that's satisfied. The people she meets have already come to terms with it.
Of the four people we meet that are 'unique', half of them are outright creepy. We can't excuse what happens in this movie, but this is also a movie about romance and trauma. Maren has to find herself and her place in this world. With this movie and who she is, that is a wild trip. The entire movie is just so strange. This isn't making the point that trauma can make you a monster, but it seems to be that darkness exists and the characters have to reconcile how they react to it. Even if you can identify with feeling like an outcast, you can't identify with why Maren and Lee feel like outcasts. That leaves me with a huge disconnect.
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