If the compulsion to eat other people can’t be suppressed, could it somehow be managed? Individual eaters seem to make their own rules. Maren, openhearted and intellectually curious, wants to find an emotionally and ethically sustainable approach to cannibalism.
It’s something they’re born with, and something the squares (or should I say the meals) can never really understand. What defines Maren, Lee, Sully and a few others (notably a gleeful predator played by Michael Stuhlbarg) is an affliction, a lifestyle and an identity. What does it mean to be an eater? The movie teases various analogies, some more palatable than others. Later, she meets Lee at a convenience store, looking on as he deals with and ingests an obnoxious customer. A middle-aged drifter named Sully (a sad and spooky Mark Rylance) teaches her how to sniff out other eaters and shows her the rope he has braided from the hair of his prey. (The cinematographer, Arseni Khachaturan, favors a moody autumnal palette.) Along the way, Maren meets a few others of her kind and learns something about their ways.
The journey winds from Virginia to Minnesota and beyond, by way of picturesque spots in Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky and other states. Maren learns that her mother was also an eater and sets out to find her. Maren has grown up under the protection of her non-eater father (André Holland), who takes off when she is 18, leaving behind an audiocassette that helps her and the audience understand her condition, which first emerged when, as a toddler, she snacked on a babysitter. These fine young cannibals - they prefer the term “eaters” - are part of a subculture that haunts the margins of mid-80s Middle America, recognizing one another by smell and subtle behavioral cues.
They will order pancakes in a pinch, but what they really crave is human flesh. Do you prefer the convenience of interstate fast food or the authenticity of a local greasy spoon? For the footloose young lovers in “Bones and All,” Luca Guadagnino’s gory, ridiculous and curiously touching new film, the decision is more a matter of “who” than “what.” Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) are foodies gripped by a specific and exotic appetite. Anyone who travels the roads of America must sooner or later confront the question of what to eat.
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