In Venice, Luca Guadagnino was awarded the Silver Lion for Best Director. Written by David Kajganich, it is an adaptation of the novel “Bones and All” by Camille DeAngelis, and marks the new artistic collaboration between the Sicilian director and the young American actor Timothée Chalamet. The story tells of the first love between Maren, a girl learning to survive on the margins of society, played by Taylor Russell, and Lee, a lonely young man with a rebellious soul. The narrative depicts the on-the-road journey of the two young people as they wander in search of identity and beauty in themselves and their surroundings. Their aim is to find their place in a world full of dangers, and above all one that cannot accept their innate condition. They share a real fierce appetite that binds them further and further away from the rest of the world, they keep running away dreaming of one day finding a point of arrival.
“I am attracted by those who, perhaps by choice, are not at the centre of the games.”
The narrative revolves around a fine line that oscillates between horror and romance, we see scenes in which human beings kill and eat other human beings, but at the same time we recognise the two fragile souls who find themselves suffering for the fate they have found for themselves. The main aspect the director wants to focus on is the point of view of those who feel lost in their own reality, those who find themselves wandering on the fringes of society, being rejected by it. The concept of cannibalism also enters the narrative as a metaphor for a situation that generates fear, shame, and prejudice in the human soul. The characters struggle with anxiety and insecurity, with the mysteries that their own person still conceals, and with the difficulties born of the courage of rebellion. With this transitional journey, the director thus explores the diversity, difficulties and loneliness of that fringe of American society that goes unnoticed and continues to let its life slip by.
Watch the trailer here.
“The film is for me a reflection on who you are, and how you can overcome what you feel, especially if it is something you cannot control in yourself. And last but not least, when will we be able to find ourselves in the other person’s gaze?”
