Bones and All (2022)

directed by Luca Guadagnino

Alexa Pellegrini

I never expected to aspire to love like cannibals do. But after watching Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, I was struck by the raw, limitless devotion that perhaps only the most disenfranchised and alienated of people could offer each other after being shunned by society and failed by their families of origin.

Based on Camille DeAngelis’s coming-of-age novel, Bones and All melds the road movie with horror and romance to create a disarmingly beautiful story about love, loss, and redemption. Maren Yearly (Taylor Russell) is an ostensibly ordinary teenager who says little and stares at her peers with fascination and longing. Her uncontrollable desire to consume flesh—euphemized as “eating”—keeps her and her father, Frank (André Holland), on the move. Maren attending an all-girls slumber party that ends with a severed finger sends Frank over the edge, and he abandons her with nothing but cash, her birth certificate, and cassette tapes that delve into her grisly childhood. She hits the road to find her long-lost mother, Janelle (Chloë Sevigny), and encounters an eccentric eater named Sully (Mark Rylance). Although Sully becomes obsessed with Maren over their shared status as outsiders, she rejects his companionship.

Life on the road forces Maren to come into her identity. For one, she realizes she can smell other eaters after crossing paths with Lee (Timothée Chalamet), a hardened teenage vagabond with a soft heart. Lee is suspicious of Maren’s kindness but too lonely to deny his urge for connection. They leave Indiana to travel across the country in a well-orchestrated version of 1980s America, which Guadagnino creates with a dazzling combination of new wave music and quirky vintage outfits designed by Giulia Piersanti. They share tender kisses in liminal spaces, compare their early life experiences, and eat—both as normal teenagers in a diner and as cannibals in a cornfield.

However, the past is hot on their heels. Lee wrestles with demons he keeps locked behind showy displays of bravado and violence. Maren tries to find closure by taking Lee with her to see Janelle, now institutionalized after eating her own hands, where Janelle tries to kill Maren to save her from a lifetime of suffering. The incident amps up Lee and Maren’s struggle to accept themselves—and each other—as eaters, and they clash over what they must do to survive.

I empathize with Maren’s longing for the uncomplicated life of a teenage girl untouched by death and other tragedies, and Lee’s complex and emotionally fractured state of being. Like both characters, difficult family relationships set the stage for discomfort with my identity and feeling alienated. Growing up, I felt too queer, too fat, and too ashamed of my background to let anyone get a glimpse of my true self—until I lost sight of her, too. I lived in a squeaky-clean suburban town where most of my peers had nuclear families and money. So, living under a different roof than both my parents, getting bullied, and being too anxious to eat made me feel like I was on the outside looking in. The bombshell suicide that rocked my family a decade ago was the fulcrum point that made me close myself off to authentic love for years afterward, despite hungering for it. I denied the possibility that anyone could embrace every part of me—not just the good parts I cultivated to pave over my past. Even as an adult, I reckon with the urge to mask my deepest emotions and insecurities rather than share them in fear of feeling misunderstood, especially by a partner.

A similar conflict is at the crux of Maren and Lee’s story, particularly their yearning for love while fearing the potential fallout that comes with vulnerability. Around the campfire, a rogue eater named Jake (Michael Stulhbarg) explains that eating someone bones and all means there is no going back—no more pretending, no more self-denial. It’s a subtle promise of the gruesome self-destruction that awaits Lee and Maren if they embrace their identities as eaters. Jake also compares Lee to an unstable junky, despite how Lee insists Maren is the one who struggles to stomach being an eater. “But maybe love will set you free,” Jake taunts, a cruel smile on his face as if he can also smell Lee’s self-hatred.

For Lee, holding space for Maren’s love is difficult after relying on himself for so long. Their relationship is an unexpected gift that upends every coping strategy he has used to survive Reagan’s bejeweled dystopia, including schemes to lure his targets without considering whether they deserve to die. Lee shuns his softer emotions because the reality of being an eater threatens to consume him. But being with Maren and bearing witness to himself through their shared experiences forces him to feel again. And while some may argue Lee and Maren are beyond redemption, the film positions cannibalism as a metaphor for both queerness and addiction. Flesh-eating is an intrinsic part of who they are; denying their true selves only perpetuates their pain.

In that sense, Bones and All is less of a true horror film and more of a grisly exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love. Instantly, I identified with Lee’s need to be strong and help Maren come to terms with being an eater to try to help himself find self-acceptance and overcome intergenerational trauma. He inherited his cannibalistic tendencies from his father, who abused him and his sister, Kayla (Anna Cobb). It’s implied Lee internalized his father’s mistreatment and neglect, and he hides his identity from Kayla by living on the fringes of society.

In one of the film’s most moving scenes, Lee and Maren sit on a hill overlooking an empty plain out West. Lee admits to torturing and then eating his father, and the rush it gave him followed by the urge to commit suicide. “You don’t think I’m a bad person?” Lee asks Maren. “All I know is that I love you,” Maren says, and he falls apart in her arms, heart laid wide open for the first time. I was struck by how Guadagnino suggests that to allow yourself to be vulnerable with your partner—despite the risk of rejection or loss—is one of life’s greatest gifts. I recognize Lee and Maren’s relationship dynamic is the one I have wanted and craved: to reveal my deepest insecurities and fears even when it’s difficult, yet walk away feeling stronger for peeling back my layers.

Guadagnino also uses Lee and Maren’s relationship to point out a truth that can hit hard for trauma survivors: No lover is superhuman, and we need to love and trust ourselves, too. It’s a lesson I learned only after shouldering too many of my ex-partner’s burdens in an attempt to make sense of my own. Toward the film’s closing, Lee and Maren decide to live as “people” for a while. Sully makes a shocking return and attacks Maren for rejecting him while also revealing he ate Kayla. After helping Maren kill and eat Sully, Lee collapses from a mortal stab wound he sustained during Sully’s ambush and shares his  dying wish: “I want you to eat me,” he says, holding Maren close. “I want you to feed. I want you to do it, Maren! Bones and all. It’s beautiful. Just love me and eat.” And so, despite her horror and heartbreak, Maren eats.

By allowing Maren to eat him alive in the final scene, Lee rewrites their curse as an act of love. Maren no longer has to fear Jake’s prophecy of becoming a monster and has the strength to live without Lee’s guidance. Lee liberates himself from his gruesome past. Together, they achieve the impossible and get free. The closing image of Maren and Lee sitting together in an ethereal Western landscape suggests he lives on inside her; it’s a bittersweet and unexpectedly hopeful ending that reminded me love can lay the groundwork for mutual healing. Beyond the initial fear that comes with vulnerability, there is joy to be found in airing out the bones that have stacked up in the closets of our hearts—and a path toward something greater than what we may believe we deserve.

Alexa Pellegrini (she/her) is a writer and visual artist living in greater Philadelphia. Her work has been featured in Flip Screen, Screen Queens, and other publications. Alexa enjoys black comedies, horror movies, and everything in between by filmmakers who dare to think outside the box. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.