Bones and All, directed by Luca Guadagnino, director and producer known for the movie Call Me by Your Name, stars Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell.
The film focuses on a young woman named Maren (played by Taylor Russel) who the viewers later find out is a cannibal. One of the opening scenes of “Bones and All” is filled with the sounds of flesh being consumed. Guadagnino protects the victim’s humanity by focusing the camera at pictures of the woman on vacation or with her family. Even if her body is currently being eaten by two cannibals, her existence was important. This beautiful and reckless coming-of-age romance creates a strong pattern around images of a person’s past. These printed photographs, which are occasionally discovered in cars or hidden in drawers, serve as an example of the numerous facets that one person may have.
Maren (Taylor Russell), who was eating people across state lines in the 1980s, is left on her own after her father abandons her at the age of 18 with only a cassette detailing her first cannibalistic experiences and her birth certificate. Her father attempted to stop Maren from acting on her hunger after becoming aware of her urges, but Maren discovers that her craving for human meat is a natural tendency that she cannot change. However, is able to change now that she is out in the world.
They call themselves “Eaters,” and they recognize one another by scent. While some of them have rules that prohibit eating people who are similar to them, others are careless. Guadagnino gives the film’s most graphic moments a warm feeling so that a love story can develop without seeming out of place. Lee (Timothée Chalamet), an orange-haired eater who kills mercilessly, is the love interest. On his route to Kentucky, where the traces of his former life still exist, he meets Maren. The two debate on how to meet their demands as partners in crime who gradually develop into lovers driven by eating. Maren travels through her newly discovered horizons with both innocence and guilt because the fear of experiencing first love interacts with the ethical dilemma of her circumstance. She disagrees with the actions Lee justifies as inevitable. She attempts to pay little attention to the dead, so she doesn’t feel guilty but in turn, causes a rift.
Returning to the meaning of the photos that Lee and Maren come across while traveling across multiple states one summer, we discover that while these pictures provide us with information about the individuals in them, they also lack depth and have only so much to say. It demonstrates how these representations only reflect perceptions of reality because “Bones and All” opens with shots of artworks showing landscapes that exist outside the boundaries of Maren’s high school. Similar to how photographs only capture a brief glimpse of a person rather than who they truly are outside of that frame and of the period it immortalizes.
