Guadagnino’s Bones and All

It is a condition some people just have to live with, like mental health issues or drug addiction. Unfortunately, it forces them to live secretive underground lives. They call themselves “eaters.” It would be ever so un-woke to call them cannibals, especially since they seem to have physical differences, like an enhanced sense of smell. Regardless, they need to eat people from time to time in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, which opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Maren’s father is suspiciously protective, but she still manages to sneak out to her friend’s slumber party, where she eats a girl’s finger. Her dad is disappointed when she comes home all bloody, but he is used to moving suddenly in the dead of night. He is also sick of it, so he abandons her after their latest relocation. Suddenly left to her own devices, and since attending school is always a risky proposition for her, Maren sets out to find her mother, whom she assumes can explain just what she is.

On the road, she meets several fellow eaters. Sully is the first. The older man radiates bad vibes, but he teaches her how to use her heightened sense of smell to detect other eaters and regular humans who are on the verge of death. (Unlike Anne Rice vampires, eaters can feed off dead people just fine.) That is very helpful, but he is still all kinds of creepy, so she decides to tag-along with the punky Lee instead.

Lee definitely looks like a skinny heroin addict, but he is a scrappy survivor. Unlike Maren, he still tries to maintain some connection to his family, particularly his little sister Kayla, but he deems it necessary to disappear for long stretches of time, for obvious reasons.

Bones and All just can’t decide if it is going to be a cheesy teen romance or cannibalistic horror movie. Frankly, the latter elements wok better. Probably the best scene in the film depicts a chance encounter with a rather sinister eater and his human-cannibal sidekick. It sort of had to be good, because that is where the title comes from.

However, the sloppy attempts to draw “born that way” eater analogies often blow-up in the film’s face, because Guadagnino’s visceral and entrails-filled eating scenes are so graphic and gory. Watching them chow down on intestines will convince most viewers young eaters really ought to be enrolled in Evangelical eater-conversion youth camps.

Nevertheless, Guadagnino vividly conveys a sense of Maren and Lee’s isolation. Clearly, Malick’s Badlands was a major visual and thematic influence. It is even partially set in the Dakota Badlands, which serves the film well.

Guadagnino’s Suspiria

Yes, the dance school is indeed a coven of witches, but they are not the blood-thirstiest killers spreading terror over the divided city of Berlin. Key members have been captured, but the Baader-Meinhof Gang remains a potent criminal and dysfunctional social force during the so-called “German Autumn.” The chaos outside provides a backdrop for the lunacy taking place inside the Markos Dance Academy in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of/homage to/riff on Suspiria (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York (11/2 nationwide).

Initially, psychiatrist Dr. Jozef Klemperer assumes his patient Patricia Hingle is delusional when she claims the Markos Academy is dominated by witches, but when she disappears, leaving behind her alarming journal filled with occult scribblings, he starts to wonder. Unfortunately, she was rather prone to unstable behavior and left-wing politics, so most of the school accepts the claim she left to join the Red Army Faction, but not Olga. When she challenges the cover story offered by Madame Blanc, the Pina Bausch-like artistic director, the witches turn their wrath on her on.

Susie Bannion, the new arrival from America, will unwittingly do their dirty work, thanks to an enchantment Madame Blanc puts on her hands and feet. The violent dance she improvises will literally beat-up, unnaturally twist, and rip apart the helpless Russian, in the film’s already celebrated and infamous show-stopping sure-to-be-iconic centerpiece scene. However, it comes squarely in the first act of the 152-minute film.

Frankly, it often feels like Guadagnino is channeling Andrzej Zuławski’s Possession more than Dario Argento’s original Suspiria. You have the washed-out color palettes, the grim Berlin setting, and episodes of jaw-dropping contortionist freak-outs. Instead of hair-raising scares, the response Guadagnino seems to be going for is: “dude that was totally bat-scat crazy.” Regardless, whatever he set out to do, he must have accomplished, because there is no holding back in this film.

In between big nutty set pieces, there is an attempt to stitch together a bit of plot, in which Mother Susperiorum will indeed eventually play a role. Speaking of playing roles, Tilda Swinton’s work here is the stuff of legend. She is wonderfully regal as Madame Blanc, gliding through the film like a cross between Martha Graham and Cruella De Ville. As you have probably heard, Swinton has finally copped to also portraying Dr. Klemperer, under heavy prosthetic makeup and the pseudonym Lutz Ebersdorf. It is pretty amazing how seamlessly she slips into character as the seventy-something man. Her voice and body language are spot-on. Arguably, it is a tribute to her skills that the is-it-her-or-not guessing game went on so long.

Dakota Johnson is also perfect for Bannion, in a glassy-eyed, vacant-staring, loose-limbed marionette (whose strings need to be pulled) kind of way. Chloe Grace Moretz is quite the hot mess as Hingle, whereas Elena Fokina gives one of the most impressive physical performances perhaps ever, as Olga (undoubtedly, she was helped by digital effects and camera tricks, but still, just check it out and try to argue). It is also a pleasure to watch all the sinister scenery chewing from the accomplished continental supporting cast, including Ingrid Caven, Angela Winkler, Silvie Testud, and Renee Soutedijk, as various coven/faculty members.

You have to give Guadagnino credit, because he successfully decouples his reinvented Suspiria form Argento’s original. Even the most ardent Argento will leave the theater saying: “okay, so that was something.”  Despite and/or because of his idiosyncratic decisions, his film is definitely its own animal—and it is a wild beast. The sum of its parts is definitely greater than its whole, but some of those parts horror fans just need to see for themselves. We’re still conflicted on it, but we wouldn’t want to sit out the debates and the second-guessing. Recommended as a horror movie event more than a discrete, formalistic viewing experience, Suspiria opens tomorrow (10/26) in New York, at the Regal Union Square and the IFC Center.

Guadagnino’s I Am Love

For the opulently wealthy Recchi family, life in Milan truly is La Dolce Vita. However, it is also a life of quiet desperation for Emma Recchi, until a chance encounter awakens her deepest emotions in Luca Guadagnino’s exquisitely crafted I Am Love (trailer here), which opens in New York this Friday.

Emma Recchi married into her life of wealth and privilege. In the process, she has forsaken her Russian heritage, adopting a properly Italian identity as befitting a Recchi. She is a loving mother and a reasonably devoted wife, but as her grown children leave to pursue their lives, hers becomes increasingly empty. As Love opens, she is busy overseeing the caterers during the Recchis’ birthday celebration for their elderly patriarch, Edoardo Sr. To their collective shock, rather than naming his son (Emma’s husband) Tancredi as his sole successor, old man Edoardo stipulates a power-sharing arrangement between his long-time presumptive heir and grandson Edo Jr.

Obviously, this significantly changes their family dynamics, so when Emma Recchi meets Edo Jr’s friend Antonio in passing that night, she hardly suspects the important role he will play in her life. She certainly made an impression of him though. Planning to open his own restaurant with Edo Jr, the much younger chef happens to run into Emma in Sanremo, the picturesque town on the Italian Riviera. This time the attraction is mutual and overwhelming, but their affair will have consequences.

While Love consists of the thoroughly tangled intimate relationships one might expect from a Cassavetes film, stylistically it is the exact opposite. Visually it soars and sweeps, dazzling the audience with its grand panoramas and glossy sheen. It is bravura work from cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, but it has the effect of keeping the characters at arm’s length from the audience.

However, as a self-consciously operatic film, Guadagnino rather brilliantly uses the music of Pulitzer Prize winning composer John Adams to convey the tumultuous emotions buried beneath the Recchis’ icy reserve. Though often described as a minimalist, his excerpted themes have a pronounced romanticism that perfectly matches the film’s luxurious visual texture.

As the film’s emotional center, Tilda Swinton subtly expresses Emma’s longing and regrets, despite Guadagnino’s maelstrom of imagery. Indeed, she would well relate to The Bridges of Madison County, if it were not so tacky and middlebrow. It is a finely calibrated performance that holds the audience riveted, carrying the emotive load throughout the film.

Truly the work of a daring auteur, Love is the sort of film that needs time to sink in. Yet, the effect of Guadagnino’s artistry (with vital contributions from Le Saux and Adams) is so immediate and powerful, it inspires slack-jawed awe. A rich feast for the senses, the accomplished Love opens this Friday (6/18) in New York at the Lincoln Plaza and Sunshine Cinema.