Bones and All
Image courtesy of MGM
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Have you ever had the insatiable urge to bite another person’s finger off because you were told when you were little, it was like biting into a carrot? While I haven’t, Maren Yearly certainly has. In the 2022 horror romance Bones and All, Taylor Russell stars as a young cannibal in the 80s who falls in love with fellow cannibal Lee (Timothee Chalamet). In this poetically grotesque film about isolation, growing up, finding love, and dealing with family trauma, there is a quiet horror of how empty the American countryside is.
Luca Guadagnino wastes no time trying to force you to look away from the screen as Maren - in an almost sapphic nature - crunches down on her friend’s finger and slips the skin off the bone. While reading that was probably disturbing. Imagine my horror when it happened very early on in the film.
Traumatized by her daughter’s actions, Maren’s father abandons her on her 18th birthday to deal with her affliction alone. It’s a commentary on people who have children when they aren’t prepared to deal with who they become. It’s almost as if he was biding his time before he could plan an escape. It is one of the most painful parts because when Maren decides to find her mother, who abandoned her years before, she ends up being even more alone than when her father left. This isolation becomes a monster through Maren’s journey to find her mother, the vast emptiness she feels when leaving home for the first time is illustrated through her journey through the Reagan-era, forgotten pieces of America, as Maren and Lee try to hide from society while feeding their urges.
I think the film’s message is highly up for interpretation. You, as the viewer, can take the pieces that resonate most with you, but there is no denying the relationship that Maren and Lee have helps them reconcile with parts of themselves they never wanted to face before. I think this is such an integral part of young relationships. You have never “belonged to” someone before, and that intimate connection reveals things you hide from yourself. The fact that these two young “eaters” find each other and then commit the intimate act of devouring together binds them in the most complete way.
Bones and All was a beautiful, utterly grotesque masterpiece about how familial trauma devours us and turns us into devourers. It takes moments so brutal that it makes you sick to your stomach and forces you to keep your eyes glued to the film for fear of missing the delicate fragility of Maren and Lee’s relationship.
