Director: Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg
Distributor: Warner Bros
Runtime: 131 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Strong blood and gore, violence, sex and coarse language

Teenager Maren learns how to survive on the margins of society.

The title does give an indication to the themes of this drama – a road film across the US with themes of a young couple finding and being dependent on each other.

Many audiences will be drawn to this film by the name of the director. He has a strong reputation for dramas in his native Italy and then made an impact, internationally, with his emotional drama, Call Me by Your Name. And his star, the young actor Timothee Chalamet, emerged into greater prominence and significant lead roles, especially in Dune.

Audiences attracted by the name of the director but knowing little about the film and its themes, should be aware of the focus on cannibalism. The theme and some of the cannibal sequences, blood, bones and all, can be, an appropriate play on words, distasteful.

The focus is on a teenager, Maren (played by the strong young actress, Taylor Russell, Words on Bathroom Walls), initially feeling her hunger pangs which surface infrequently as she does her ordinary living. Her concerned father leaves and bequeaths her mother’s birth certificate to her. In Maren’s quest to find her mother, her journey takes her from Maryland to Minnesota.

To develop the eeriness of the theme, the writers introduce a bizarre character, Sully (a sinister and striking performance from Rylance), revealing that the Feeders, have a powerful sense of smell and can discover and find fellow-Feeders.

However, much of the film takes on the conventions of teenagers finding each other, friends and companions, falling in love. Maren is able to scent Lee (Chalamet) and we accompany them on their adventures, encounters with two strange policemen, one a Feeder, the other dependent on him, a man who runs a stall at a fair, which leads them deeper into the trap of cannibalism that is their lives.

Maren is able to find some explanations, finding her grandmother (Harper), getting information about her mother (Sevigny), while being pursued by Sully. She finally finds some peace and the possibility of settling with Lee. But, given their condition, given society, given their needs and consequent action, can they survive? No definite answers here, for us to work out what we think and feel.