The most romantic movie of the year is a teenage dirtbag road trip featuring a couple of crazy cannibal kids colliding unexpectedly before embarking on a meander across the Midwest. It’s “Badlands” with ‘80s punks who feast on flesh, and one of the most moving and authentically beautiful love stories about the rarity that is finding yourself in someone else.
Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” is a swoony tapestry of Americana dripping with gore, caked in viscera. David Kajganich, who wrote the screenplays for Guadagnino’s “A Bigger Splash” and “Suspiria,” has adapted Camille DeAngelis’ award-winning young adult novel to the screen, a coming-of-age tale that just so happens to feature cannibalism, in all its gory detail. The luminous, yet steely Taylor Russell stars as Maren, a teenager “eater” who finds herself abruptly on her own after she’s abandoned by her father (Andre Holland), who simply can’t continue keeping his daughter’s cravings under wraps.
Maren, equipped with only her birth certificate, some cash and a confessional cassette tape from her father, heads from Maryland to Minnesota on a bus, in search of her mother, finding different ports in the storm along the way. Most importantly, she discovers that she’s not alone. “I thought I was the only one,” she confesses to Sully (Mark Rylance), who sniffs her out at a rainy Ohio bus stop and offers her shelter, and food. Maren soon skips out on Sully and links up with Lee (Timothée Chalamet), whose scent she picks up in an Indiana convenience store.
