Timothée Chalamet Stars in ‘Bones and All’ Cannibal Movie

Bones and All is getting more fleshed out by the day. When the movie was first announced in January 2021, it felt like Luca Guadagnino, the Italian auteur behind Call Me by Your Name, was trolling us. It seemed as though there were far too many cannibal news stories, and by that we mean the one big one wherein CMBYN leading man Armie Hammer was accused of being a cannibal, among other allegations of misconduct and sexual assault. But Bones and All, a movie about teenage cannibals in love, is real and happening. However bad the timing is for Hammer’s new career in time-shares, though, the film marches along anchored by the promise of the other Guadagnino leading man, Timothée Chalamet’s sharp cheekbones and deep-set eyes. The hunger for Bones and All continues to grow with new photos and a Venice Film Festival premiere. Here’s all the cast, plot, and release-date information we know so far. Come grab a bite.

Call Me by Your Name breakout star Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell have strapped in for the ride. Russell plays Maren, a young woman getting used to the margins of society when she first encounters Chalamet’s Lee. She is known for her transcendent performance in Trey Edward Shults’s indie melodrama Waves, which earned the actor a Gotham Award. The supporting cast includes cross-generational New York “It” girl Chloë Sevigny and the chameleonic André Holland, most known for his roles in Moonlight and Passing. David Gordon-Green, Jessica Harper, Jake Horowitz, and Mark Rylance have also signed on.

These bumper stickers …
Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis/MGM

Yes. This is a (cannibal) love story. But this isn’t a bittersweet, peach-flavored, first taste of pining set in rich people’s Italian country homes. Bones and All, adapted from the Camille DeAngelis novel of the same name, follows a pair of young wanderers as they fall in love in a world that looks down on their tendency to eat human flesh. It’s also in the grand tradition of American road movies, where the characters journey a thousand miles across Reagan’s America to run away from their “terrifying” pasts (so says the film’s logline!). Apparently it’s their otherness and disenfranchisement that causes the young lovers to go on the lam, though the studio hasn’t offered any specifics just yet. Guadagnino reunites with his longtime screenwriting collaborator David Kajganich for the script.

“There is something about the disenfranchised, about people living on the margins of society, that I am drawn toward and touched by,” Guadagnino said in a statement. “I want to see where the possibilities lie for them, enmeshed within the impossibility they face. The movie is for me a meditation on who I am and how I can overcome what I feel, especially if it is something I cannot control in myself. And lastly, and most importantly, when will I be able to find myself in the gaze of the other?” Sight unseen, the film’s cannibalism appears to be a metaphor for marginalized communities, according to the director. I will wait until I see the film to pass any judgment on the matter.

Luca Guadagnino getting the magic-hour shot.
Photo: Yannis Drakoulidis/MGM

The movie will premiere at the Venice Film Festival out of competition (for those infatuated with a certain French American: His Venice appearance means there are new Timmy gondola pics coming soon). It will hit cinemas outside the lido on November 23, just in time for Thanksgiving. I do not recommend cooking up human parts for your Turkey Day meal to celebrate the release of the film. But do you.