TELLURIDE, Colo. — The Telluride Film Festival provides an annual opportunity to view auteurs in their natural habitat, a "mountain of cinema," in the words of the event's foot soldiers, an event that courts cineastes, forbids selfies and offers a potent bloody mary at its spectacular mountainside opening day brunch.
The movies these award-winning filmmakers have brought to this year's festival have been a mixed bag. Sam Mendes' "Empire of Light," a valentine to movie theaters, drew a turn-away crowd at its premiere and generally met expectations with its star Olivia Colman covering a multitude of narrative sins. By contrast, festival patrons largely shunned Alejandro G. Inarritu's "Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths" after it was drubbed days earlier in Venice. And Todd Field, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "In the Bedroom" and "Little Children," returned after a 16-year hiatus with "Tar," an immaculately crafted provocation guaranteed to divide audiences and win Cate Blanchett another Oscar.
Then there's Luca Guadagnino's "Bones and All," a tender story of young love starring Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell as fine young cannibals trying to negotiate their natures and doing their best to ethically source their next meal. "This doesn't seem like a Telluride movie," an older festival patron mused, debating whether to attend a late-night screening. And on first glance, it doesn't, which, in some ways, makes "Bones and All" the perfect Telluride movie, a love story spiritually attuned to Terrence Malick's "Badlands" and possessing an acute understanding of what people on society's margins must do to survive.
