From a far less daring filmmaker, a modern-day cannibal love story would amp up the grindhouse absurdity, delightedly writhe in pulp and muck, to put a safe and boring distance between the viewers and the characters. To wit, imagine how unbearable Reservoir Dog’s infamous ear-cutting scene would be without Stealers Wheel ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’. 

But director Luca Guadagnino walks a far tighter rope. An early scene shows a middle-aged man and a young woman on their knees feasting on a fresh cadaver. The sounds of squelching, slurping and munching are surely stomach-churning, but Guadagnino directs our attention away from the horror and to evidence of the victim’s life. Photographs, jewellery, and other mundane details of a lived-in house; as she’s being desecrated and devoured, her life becomes real to us. Bones and All’s tone is permeated with this coarse bluntness, even as the rugged gorgeousness of the Rust Belt is artfully captured. 

In any case, the story centres on a couple of displaced youths, struggling with their unnatural urge to eat human beings.  Lee (Timothee Chalamet, bringing his signature blend of disaffected cool and simmering torment) and Maren (Taylor Russell, the picture of ruined innocence) embark on what becomes a sort of existential journey to find a home, even as they destroy the lives of nearly anyone unfortunate enough to cross their paths. It’s a compelling metaphor for anyone, saddled with a normal amount of guilt, struggling with a destructive hunger that can never be satiated

Popping in and out of the narrative is a third quirky cannibal, Sully (Mark Rylance, providing much of the film’s black comedy), who you can never quite tell if he is dim-witted or a well-disguised wolf.

 Whether you buy into this love story or not will certainly determine your reaction to its bloody climax; it might produce a fit of giggles to expel discomfort. The tragedy was a little lost on me, but it was beautifully rendered all the same.

3.5 Stars out of 5