How do cannibals kiss? It must get messy, with a certain amount of lip-chewing involved. There’s a mass of bloody crimson – a maelstrom of near-abstract swirls, from which two faces emerge as you gaze – in a painting by American artist Elizabeth Peyton, which appeared this autumn in a huge reproduction on the facade of the 13th-century palazzo Ca’ de Mosta in Venice. It’s the first poster image for Bones and All, the latest film by Italian director Luca Guadagnino, which tells a story of two young cannibals in love.
Guadagnino recalls: “I said to Elizabeth, ‘Find the image in the movie that you want to comment on’ and she found the final kiss, which is a very ambiguous kiss. Is it a kiss of love or a kiss of annihilation? Is it a kiss of eating the other or a kiss of falling into the other? The kiss is always a very dangerous moment – particularly because of two years of Covid,” he says with a laugh.
