Taking the flesh from the bone and getting down to the skeletal structure, “Bones and All” is a very familiar film; two outlaws on the run while they explore their hunger for love. Director Luca Guadagnino allows viewers to feel a surplus of emotions, ranging from disgust, fear, anger, sadness and yearning. 

Set in the 1980s, Maren, a young 18-year-old girl, has one craving in particular, human flesh. This gut wrenching revelation was made by her father when she was just a toddler, moving to many different places and constantly telling his daughter to hide her true self was just two of the ways that Maren’s father was trying to protect her. However, Maren decided her own fate when she ate one of her friends’ fingers at a sleepover. Driving miles and miles away from her new town to a newer town, she is left with money and a cassette tape of her father explaining everything. Maren’s new destiny is finding her mother. 

Sometime throughout the adventure, she meets a man named Sully, a very deranged man at the least. Sully is also an eater, which is what they call themselves and other cannibals, he guides her the ways of eaters. Sulky Sully is truly a horrifying person to be around, unpredictable and still somehow so innocent. However, she quickly leaves him and soon meets Lee, the love interest and another eater. 

As they embark on their 3,000 mile journey, Maren and Lee meet many others throughout the trip and quickly fall in love, they soon become the cannibal version of Bonnie and Clyde. 

Guadagnino is not afraid to shy away from the visceral actions of their survivalist needs. In fact, he shows many scenes of their thirst for blood. Guadagnino adds in many of these shameful, animalistic scenes of the eaters and their victims. Soon after, covered in the victims’ congealed blood, the characters go on as if nothing happened. 

However, there is something so innocent, so elegant about the film itself. Lee states many times about how his love for Maren is so innocent, calling her “his girl,” singing to her and telling her that he knows she had her first kiss with him. Viewers almost forget that ten minutes prior, this beautiful couple had their heads deep into someone’s carcass. The sweetness towards each other makes it so hard to hate them. Camille DeAngelis, the original author of the book, creates characters that make me want to empathize with them for some odd reason. 

Seeing Maren, Lee and even “Sulky” Sully’s backgrounds, makes the viewers feel for them. 

The ending of the movie leaves me unsatisfied with the plot, and dare I say it… possibly hungry for some more.