A small ocean of bodily fluids is spilled in Karim Ainouz’s macabre and messy family comedy Rosebush Pruning (which had its world premiere to a mixed reception in the Berlin Film Festival competition this weekend). The Brazilian director dips his fingers in blood, semen, sweat and tears. His film has more than its share of bizarre and arresting moments – Riley Keough pleasuring herself with an aubergine; Callum Turner using toothpaste in a very novel way – but this warped satire is ultimately neither as shocking nor as funny as you initially hope it’s going to be.
Turner, strongly tipped as the next 007, shows plenty of delinquent swagger as Edward, a spoiled American rich kid living with his dysfunctional family in a villa in the Spanish countryside. By his own admission, he, like the rest of his siblings, is a “lazy, mediocre, vapid, egotist”. He takes pride in neither reading nor writing, but has an all-consuming love of fashion. His lesbian mother (Pamela Anderson) has seemingly been eaten alive by wolves. His sister Anna (Keough) is an aspiring punk guitarist. One of his brothers, Robert (Lukas Gage), has frequent epileptic fits. The other, Jack (Jamie Bell), is the most normal of the brood – but even he has his quirks. Presiding over them all is their father (Tracy Letts), a blind, lecherous and thoroughly repulsive figure with strange carnal appetites. Elle Fanning plays Jack’s girlfriend, Martha, an outsider regarded with hostility by the rest of the family who criticise her about everything from the size of her breasts to her cheap, broken watch. Edward thoroughly despises the family and would happily see them wiped off the face of the earth. Jack is the only one he thinks might just about deserve to live.
