What do you get when you combine cannibalism, romance, an on-the-road adventure, and two of the greatest young actors of the generation? “A metaphor for the trauma we carry, the curses we hold within ourselves, and the inability to move on from what we find to be our original sin,” says Timothée Chalamet, who stars as Lee in Luca Guadagnino’s all-new horror romance film Bones and All.
Metaphor and fable were the two most common words that the cast and crew used to describe Bones and All last night at its premiere at the 60th annual New York Film Festival, and it couldn’t be more true. The film follows eighteen-year-old Maren (played by the unparalleled Taylor Russell) who believes that she is the only person in the world harboring her deep (and frankly, poorly kept) secret, that there is a hunger inside of her that can only be sated by another human being. After being abandoned by her father, Maren sets out on a journey to find what she isn’t even quite sure she’s looking for, maybe hoping to find a place where she belongs. After a bone-chilling encounter with Mark Rylance’s Sully, the first person she’s ever met thats “like her,” Maren is left fearful and confused. But after a chance encounter with Lee inside of a grocery store, the two seek solace in each other and begin to see what it’s like to finally have someone understand you. Chalamet and Russell deliver an absolutely stunning performance depicting a coming of age narrative in such a unique format. Though the movie is undoubtedly gory, there’s such a calming sense of humanity to it during the moments of in between, and had you tuned into the film midway into one of those scenes, you might not even get the sense that it’s a horror film at all. The versatility is truly one of the many components that makes Guadagnino such an incredible director. We had the amazing opportunity to talk to this brilliant cast and crew, check out our full conversation below!