BONES AND ALL (D) - Luca Guadagnino has been in a downward spiral for years now, and let's hope he has finally hit rock bottom. The man who once brought us "I Am Love" and "A Bigger Splash" -- two of the finest films of the 21st century -- has been wallowing in self-indulgent melodrama for years now.
His fascination with Timothee Chalamet -- the pouty, pretty star of the lumbering "Call Me By Your Name" -- has led him down a disastrous road. And here we have a road movie -- at least a weak attempt at one -- that is also a mess from start to finish. Hey, how about an earnest drama about two young adults coming to terms with their shared affliction -- cannibalism.
The drama that unfolds is, too often, downright laughable -- as in accidentally funny and just weird overall. The gore -- the chomping of flesh -- is rampant. It is simply unpleasant to sit through.
Chalamet co-stars as moody Lee, a 130-pound bad-ass, who is drawn to 18-year-old Maren (Taylor Russell), who has newly set out on her own and is discovering her full powers as a cannibal. She recently learned -- from a creepy old stranger (Mark Rylance in "Cape Fear" De Niro territory) with a stereotypical southern accent -- that "eaters" can smell each other, and thus sustain some sort of noble underground railroad of freaks who crave human flesh. These outcasts literally sniff the air, as if they are floating cartoon animals hot on the scent of a freshly baked pie.
Chalamet mumbles a lot and clenches his jaw to show that he's conveying emotions. He seems to be channeling Nicolas Cage's over-the-top character in "Valley Girl" -- but as if it were being parodied, like in "Walk Hard." Russell seems talented but completely adrift in an under-defined role. I felt bad for Russell having to interact with her co-stars. She had to cuddle up with Chalamet's bony physique, and the two have zero chemistry together. And she not only endures leers and slurs from Rylance's character, but he also lies on top of her at one point, literally drooling. Why would anyone think to put a young actress through that? There certainly is little payoff to the scenes in this unfortunate movie.
I felt bad for Mark Rylance, too. There is no salvaging his spooky hick stalker. Rylance is considered, at least in his IMDb intro, "the greatest stage actor of his generation." (I'd never seen one of his movies before. Or his stage plays, for that matter.) Here he is reduced to a stereotypical menacing simpleton.
So, as far as the lead performances go -- whether it was their fault or not -- this film has three strikes against it. That doesn't even count the wretched writing, and just the overall cravenness of the idea in the first place.
"Bones and All" fails at every attempt at allegory it might have been trying to make: addiction; otherness; coming out; the struggles of adolescence; child abuse; parental abandonment; stalking. Any serious analysis along those lines fails as a fool's errand. Maren seeks solace in a tape recording made by her father, and those snippets start out as a clever narrative device, but the drip-drip of these mundane musings become irritating by the second half of the film.
It all reaches a silly climax. As Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's turgid soundtrack bleats on, Chalamet utters some final lines to his co-star that are as predictable as they are unintentionally funny. From beginning to end, this is an ill-advised dud.
* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.
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