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 Award 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. It is the first MGM film to be distributed internationally by Warner Bros. under their new multi year international theatrical distribution pact with MGM, following MGM's previous deal with Universal Pictures.[3][4] 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
In 1988, teenager Maren Yearly partially eats her friend's ring finger at a sleepover. Her beleaguered single father Frank, used to her cannibalistic nature since she murdered her babysitter at three years old, promptly relocates them and abandons her shortly after her 18th birthday, leaving behind a message where he hopes for her to overcome her hunger. Deciding she wants to find her long-absent mother Janelle, Maren sets out for Minnesota.
She runs into the eccentric Sully, who explains he is a fellow "eater", their people can identify each other by scent, and that it is part of their code to never eat each other. He leads her to the house of a dying, elderly woman and begins to feed, though a horrified Maren refuses to eat. The woman dies the next day and Maren reluctantly joins him in eating the corpse, after which he shows her a rope made from the hair of his victims. Unsettled by his growing obsession with her, she flees and continues her travels.
While shoplifting in Indiana, both she and a young man named Lee try to stop a drunk customer from harassing a woman. She later finds Lee having eaten the man, and they steal the man's truck. Lee joins her on her trip and they begin a relationship. They stop in his hometown in Kentucky, where he refuses to discuss his past and they meet his sister Kayla. They meet a pair of eaters, where one discusses how he ate a victim "bones and all" by eating them in their entirety, and the other admits he is an eater by choice rather than out of necessity, disgusting Lee and Maren. Lee seduces and kills an amusement park employee because he believes he has no family, but Maren is horrified to discover that he does.
Maren tracks down Janelle's mother as they arrive in Minnesota, who informs her that Janelle was adopted after being found abandoned and had willingly committed herself to a psychiatric hospital. Maren visits her to find that she has eaten her own hands. A nurse gives Maren a letter from Janelle, who proclaims they are better off dead than living as monsters. Janelle tries to eat Maren before being restrained. A traumatized Maren abandons Lee and is found by Sully, who she again rejects, causing him to grow violent.
Lee returns home and Maren eventually follows him there, where Kayla explains to her that Lee killed their abusive father. She and Lee rekindle their relationship, and he admits that he ate his father after he tried to eat him first, disgusted by the fact that he enjoyed doing so. They agree to live normal lives and move to Michigan. After some time, Maren comes home to find Sully in their apartment, who holds her at knifepoint. Lee returns and they kill Sully, but Lee is mortally stabbed in the process as Maren finds Kayla's hair in the hair rope. Lee pleads for Maren to eat him "bones and all", which she reluctantly does.
Chloë Sevigny as Janelle Kerns, Maren's mother and an eater
David Gordon Green as Brad, a police officer who is a paraphilic cannibal but not an eater
Jessica Harper as Barbara Kerns, Maren's adoptive grandmother
Jake Horowitz as Lance, a carnival worker who becomes Lee's victim
Kendle Coffey as Sherry
Anna Cobb as Kayla, Lee's sister
Production
Development
One of the film's producers, Theresa Park, was on a trip to the London Book Fair in 2015, when she discovered Camille DeAngelis's Bones & All, and described it as one of the "most heartbreaking" novels she had read.[5] She "optioned" the screen rights in 2016.[6] Park only sent the book to one screenwriter, David Kajganich, as she thought he would like it based on his work on AMC's The Terror.[7][5][8] The screenwriter found the story to be a "surprising blend of genres" and described it as "exciting".[7] He and Park met with DeAngelis to know if she approved of him adapting it, as the story centered on a young woman, which she did.[7]
Kajganich's first choice for director was Luca Guadagnino, as he trusted him due to their previous collaborations.[9][10] Guadagnino was busy with other projects at the time, and declined.[9] Kajganich decided to contact director Antonio Campos, with whom he had also worked in the past, and he boarded the project in 2019.[11][12] The script was developed by Park and Kajganich over a period of five years.[5] Neither of them was fond of the idea of having a film studio meddling with the project, so they started it indepndently.[9][7] The first draft took around two and a half years, due to Kajganich's other commitments, nevertherless he appreciated the long process, as it allowed him to make decisions, that would have not been possible if the film had studio backing.[9] The screenplay was finished over the COVID-19 lockdown but Campos had to drop out to work on another project, at that point Kajganich reached to Guadagnino again, who only read the script as a favor due to their friendship.[9] Guadagnino joined the project a couple of weeks later, with the condition that actor Timothée Chalamet, with whom he had worked on Call Me by Your Name (2017), got on board as well.[9][13]
After meeting with the director in Rome, Chalamet accepted the offer and joined as producer as well.[14][15] Guadagnino and Chalamet wanted to keep the production independent so they sought out Italian financiers at the end of 2020.[14][12] Guadagnino first contacted The Apartment's Lorenzo Mieli, with whom he had worked previously on HBO's We Are Who We Are, Mieli teamed with
Memo's Francesco Melzi d'Eril and Marco Morabito, both frequent Guadagnino collaborators, to front the $20 million needed for the film.[16][17] Guadagnino and Chalamet also contacted, Call Me by Your Name producer and personal friend, Peter Spears to join them.[18][19] Spears remarked on the uniqueness of the story as one of the reasons, to not look for studio involvement.[18] Once they reached the budget, the North American distribution rights were bought by MGM in a negative pickup deal.[16][14][17] The team including the producers, Guadagnino, Chalamet, and the rest of the actors, deferred their salaries until after the distribution rights were bought, which "really helped with investors," said Melzi d'Eril.[14][16][9] Both Guadagnino and Kajganich credited Chalamet's involvement as the main reason the film got financed in the first place.[14][9] The film was executive produced by Giovanni Corrado and Raffaella Viscardi; with investment coming from The Apartment, 3 Marys, Memo, Tenderstories, Adler, Elafood, Elafilm, Manila, Serfis and Wise.[20]
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."[30] He also said that Chalamet and Russell have "a gleaming power" and are able to "portray universal feelings".[30]
Marketing
The first teaser for Bones and All was released on August 10, 2022.[31] 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.[32]
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".[33][34] The song was chosen by lead actor Timothée Chalamet.[35] Safeeyah Kazi of Collider called the trailer "chilling" and "intense".[36] Toussaint Egan of Polygon noted similarities to 1994's crime thriller Natural Born Killers.[37] Allegra Frank of The Daily Beast called it "gorgeously bloody", and praised it for not sharing too much information.[38] Lauren Milici of Total Film described the trailer as Let The Right One In meets Bonnie and Clyde."[39] An extended trailer was released on October 5, 2022.[40]
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.[41][42] 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.[43]
Bones and All had a limited theatrical release beginning on November 18, 2022, before opening wide on November 23.[38] Vision Distribution released the film in Italy on November 23, 2022, in collaboration with Prime Video and Sky,[48] 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.[45][49]
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.[53][54][55][56]
In its limited opening weekend, Bones and All grossed $120,000 from five theaters.[57] 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.[58] It made $921,000 on its first day, including $345,000 from Tuesday night previews.[59] It went on to debut to $2.7 million (including $3.5 million over the five days), finishing in eighth.[60] In its third weekend of release, the film made $1.2 million.[61] 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.[62][63]
The film debuted first at the Italian box office, grossing a total of €109.036 (US$113,643).[64]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 290 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."[65]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[66] 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.[60]
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.[67]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.[68]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".[69]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.[70]
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."[71]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."[72] 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.[73] 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."[74]
"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.[75] 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".[76] 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."[77]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."[78]
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