Bones and all by Luca Guadagnino

Better than many words, sometimes the numbers speak for themselves. Over the weekend in mid-October, in Italian cinemas, there were -15% takings compared to the weekend of the previous week, -26% compared to the same period in 2021 and -52% compared to the same period of the average of the pre-Covid years 2017-18-19.

In practice, in 5 years, half of the spectators have been lost who previously, even for unconscious reasons, deserted the hall as a closed place, but now no longer attend it for eminently economic reasons due to the consequences of the crisis Ukraine. After all, the proof came last September when, during a week at very discounted prices (but clearly not sustainable throughout the year by the film industry), cinemas recovered and recorded good numbers of admissions. The lesser availability of available funds probably affects in turn the choice of the spectator, increasingly demanding in the face of so much on offer and also induces a heightened sense of responsibility in those who write and propose.

Banning any doubts, the film of the month is Bones and all, the latest work by Luca Guadagnino, one of the most interesting Italian directors of the last decade, who rose after his first works (I am love above all of 2009) to international fame with Call me by your name (4 nominations for the Oscars 2018).

This new film of his is the first filmed in the USA and more precisely in the central plains of the Midwest (between the states of Ohio and Kentucky) where in the mid-1980s two young men, Maren and Lee ( played by Taylor Russell and Timothee Chalamet), on the margins of society and united by an all-encompassing love and a very complicated past. A melodramatic story that immediately engages with a surprising horror theme (and which I won't reveal) confirming how horror literature and cinema are often the best means of analyzing the disturbances of the human soul. And this work could be one of the best examples of recent years.


Davide Bracco
NP November 2022