Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All is not just a film about cannibals it’s a gorgeously grotesque ode to the outsiders, the ones who hunger in ways society can’t stomach. Part road movie, part horror romance, it follows Maren (Taylor Russell), a young woman with an insatiable craving for human flesh, as she drifts through 1980s America’s forgotten corners. Along the way, she meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet), another “eater” whose swagger masks a deep loneliness. Together, they’re magnetic two lost souls carving out a space where their monstrousness can be tenderness.

Russell is a revelation, her quiet intensity making Maren’s struggle achingly human. Chalamet, all frayed edges and wounded bravado, has never been more raw. But it’s Mark Rylance, as the unsettlingly genteel Sully, who steals scenes with a performance so eerie it lingers like a bad taste.

Guadagnino’s direction is tactile and poetic fields of golden grass, rust-stained teeth, the sticky heat of a Midwest summer. The violence, when it comes, is intimate, almost reverent, forcing us to confront the humanity in the inhuman. The soundtrack, a mix of dreamy synths and melancholic folk, underscores the film’s aching romance.

If the film falters, it’s in its pacing some stretches feel aimless, mirroring the characters’ drift but testing patience. Yet even this serves a purpose: Bones and All isn’t about the destination, but the hunger that drives us. It’s a love letter to the parts of ourselves we’re told to hide, and a reminder that to love someone is to consume them, one way or another.