The Venice festival again succumbed on Friday to the magnetism of the Franco-American actor Timothée Chalamet, against the grain as the disturbing protagonist of a cannibal road-movie in the heart of deep America in the 1980s.
Delirious fans welcomed their whooping cough when he arrived on the Lido, where he came to defend the colors of Bones and Allin competition for the Golden Lion and signed by Italian director Luca Guadagnino, the very man who made Chalamet a star with Call Me by Your Name.
But five years later, no sweet gay romance in the idyllic setting of a bourgeois Italian villa: the 26-year-old actor breaks his smooth image of a young man well in all respects by lending his angel face to Lee, a wanderer who embarks on an odyssey with Maren, whose irrepressible appetite for human flesh he shares.
It is the story of “two very isolated young people, who do not yet have a real identity and assert themselves through love”, summarized Chalamet at a press conference, confessing that he “was dying to to work again with Luca” Guadagnino.
“To be young today […] means to be judged permanently. I can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up under the ax of social media. It was a relief to portray characters struggling with their dilemmas without having to go to Reddit, Twitter or TikTok to see how they fit into society,” observed Chalamet, now a regular at the Lido where he had been before. last year for the blockbuster Dunes by Denis Villeneuve.
The character of Maren is played by Canadian actress Taylor Russell, best known so far for her roles in the series Strange Empire andyou Falling Skies.
Bonnie and Clyde
Our two protagonists sail at the wheel of their blue pick-up and Ronald Reagan is at the White House, but it doesn’t matter: this umpteenth version of the infernal couple formed by Bonnie and Clyde evolves in an eternal America, that of the Midwest haunted by the left behind. -for-account of the American dream.
Over the course of their journey, Lee and Maren seek to understand their difference and learn to live with it, not without some violent hitches giving rise to some gory scenes where we see them devouring still quivering bodies.
“There is something about those who live on the margins of society that attracts and moves me. I love these characters,” explained Luca Guadagnino. “I’m interested in their emotional journeys.”
“I see this film as a meditation on what we are and how to overcome what we are, especially if it is something that we cannot control”, underlined the filmmaker, who chose to adapt the homonymous novel by Camille DeAngelis.
Beyond the analysis of the psychological springs accompanying the quest for self in these two marginals, Bones and All arouses an almost physical discomfort in the viewer, not so much by showing unbearable scenes as by making a couple who violate a universal taboo terribly attractive.
In the background, Guadagnino lets his camera frolic over grandiose and magical landscapes where his characters seem to be only fleeting shadows destined to be devoured by their destiny. A kind of children’s tale where the ogres are also beings of flesh and blood shivering with realism. To remember in this regard the chilling performance of an unrecognizable Chloë Sevigny in the role of Maren’s mother.