Puberty is the time of body horror, genre films have been processing this knowledge for longer, but rarely more beautifully than in Luca Guadagnino's "Bones & All".

The Italian director had already tried the genre in 2018 when he reinterpreted Dario Argento's witch classic "Suspiria".

This film was also in the competition for the Golden Lion in Venice, so now after four years Guadagnino is back at the Lido with a thematic revival.

Maria Wiesner

Editor in the “Society & Style” department.

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The story of "Bones & All" is based on the young adult novel of the same name by the American Camille DeAngelis and follows the young Maren in search of her mother.

Her father left her alone when she came of age because Maren's appetite for human flesh grew as she got older.

This may sound like splatter film at first, and of course there's no lack of relevant elements, but Guadagnino approaches them smarter than the genre average.

He even adds to the chills by only hearing the "eaters" munching and chewing in one scene while the camera captures old photos and souvenirs at the victim's home.

The horror is just a means of telling about the search for one's own identity.

Guadagnino turns it into a road trip through the Midwestern United States in the 1980s.

The young Canadian Taylor Russell manages to shape the character of Maren in such a way that one quickly feels the same sympathy for her as for the vampires, who otherwise like to negotiate the difficulties between desire, lust and the consequences of overly outspoken physicality in youth films.

Her Maren is smart and reads everything from JRR Tolkien to James Joyce that comes her way on the Greyhound bus rides from Ohio through Indiana to Kentucky.

And she is careful enough not to trust most people.

When she meets the stray Lee (Timothée Chalamet), the wall begins

Guadagnino stages the young couple groping for intimacy in the same soft light that he used to cover the love scenes in Call Me By Your Name, Chalamet's international breakthrough film.

In Bones & All, too, the director finds romance in the most unlikely of places.

On the light grid above a slaughterhouse, of all places, Russell and Chalamet's fingers intertwine, while below cows breathe peacefully into the night.

The director largely leaves the stage to his young stars.

Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny shine in brief supporting roles.

But Chalamet and Russell carry the plot convincingly every minute.