Armie Hammer Accusations ‘Didn’t Dawn on’ Luca Guadagnino While Making Cannibal Love Story ‘Bones and All’

Big questions abound after the world premiere of “Bones And All” last week at the Venice Film Festival. For one, will Luca Guadagnino‘s latest win the Golden Lion? The movie vies against the likes of “The Banshees Of Inisherin” and others for Venice’s top prize, but “Bones And All” remains a favorite.

Clayton Davis You’d think the reunion of Academy Award nominee Timothee Chalamet and his “Call Me by Your Name” director Luca Guadgnino in “Bones and All” would be all anyone could talk about following the film’s premiere last weekend at Telluride and Venice.   Instead, the name on everyone’s lips is going to be Taylor Russell. The up-and-comer, who first gained prominence with her role in “Waves” (2019), takes center stage and devours every morsel of her time on screen. She brings grace and restraint, two qualities that don’t exactly spring to mind when you’re talking about a coming-of-age story about teen cannibals drawn together by mutual blood lust. I only wish I had more faith Oscar voters would give the movie its proper shake, as genre movies always face an uphill climb, no matter how well reviewed or beloved they are by critics and audiences. 

Luca Guadagnino has apparently created another interesting, must-see film with the upcoming “Bones & All,” if you are to believe the hype coming from the Venice Film Festival, where it received an eight-and-a-half-minute standing ovation. But his cannibal love story isn’t the only project Guadagnino is talking about right now, as he also is still beating the drum to get his “Brideshead Revisited” series off the ground.

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) hopes to revive his dream project to make a mammoth 10-episode television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.

Timothée Chalamet‘s new movie received an almost nine-minute standing ovation at Venice Film Festival. The actor arrived in Italy for the premiere of his second film with Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino on Friday (2 September). Chalamet plays a cannibal in the film, which is titled Bones and All.

There’s no shortage of star power on the Lido this year. The 79th Venice Film Festival boasts such boldface names as Timothée Chalamet — along with his fellow the Bones And All castmates and filmmaker Luca Guadagnino — Cate Blanchett, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Adam Driver and dozens more.

It’s Bones and All day here at the Venice Film Festival, where the Timothée Chalamet-Taylor Russell starrer from Luca Guadagnino received a 10-minute standing ovation after its world premiere screening this evening.

Timothee Chalamet had all of Venice seeing red on Friday night at the world premiere of “Bones & All.” The actor donned a sparkling red pantsuit (with no back above the waist) in the shade of blood, a cheeky wink to the drama’s central protagonists — two cannibals in love.The drama, which reteams Chalamet with his “Call Me By Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino, lives up to its title with gory attacks and scenes that involve limb chewing and eating. But despite the uncomfortable subject matter, the audience at the Venice premiere for the movie devoured “Bones & All.” The film received a 8.5-minute standing ovation, the longest and most enthusiastic of the festival so far. (It handily beat the previous record holder “Tar,” a drama starring Cate Blanchett as a tortured composer.)

Timothee Chalamet is making a fashion statement on the red carpet at the 2022 Venice Film Festival!

The beginning of Bones and All is genuinely the stuff of nightmares and could easily stand alone as a short, tapping into the American tradition of the urban myth while at the same time laying down a deceptively sophisticated narrative. The rest of Luca Guadagnino’s latest doesn’t quite maintain this level of mastery and tension, which is in some ways a blessing, but that’s possibly because Bones and All isn’t really a horror movie. After the shocking opening salvo, the film sheds its genre skin to become an almost anthropological study of outsiderdom, using the false dawn of the American 1980s as a sort of petri dish for a new kind of conformity that has led us where we are today.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In vampire movies, from “Nosferatu” to the “Twilight” films to “Only Lovers Left Alive,” bloodsucking is usually more than just bloodsucking — it’s about sex, addiction, power — and that’s why the main event in a vampire movie doesn’t have to be the literal spectacle of watching fangs tear into human flesh. The elegance of the genre is that it has a built-in metaphorical sweep. “Bones and All,” Luca Guadagnino’s YA road movie about a couple of lost souls who happen to be cannibals (it’s adapted from the novel by Camille DeAngelis), is a film in which the characters behave very much like vampires. They blend into society, but they’re really a breed apart, with the ability to smell fresh meat (and one another) and a consuming desire to “feed.”

To love is to want to consume someone whole, to pick their skin and sinews out of the gaps between your teeth, to swallow their pancreas and wash it all down with gulps of throat-fizzing stomach acid. Take the age-old question that dominates the Grindr lexicon: do you want to be someone, be with them, or be inside them? “Bones and All,” Luca Guadagnino’s typically sumptuous, deeply romantic American parable — about a pair of teen cannibals, coming of age against the backdrop of ‘80s Reaganism — literalizes this allure, as any great anthropophagist love story should.

There’s always a great selection of films competing at the Venice Film Festival every year for the coveted Golden Lion. However, the competition at the festival’s 79th edition looks especially fierce.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The Zurich Film Festival will honor Italian director and screenwriter Luca Guadagnino at its 18th edition, which runs Sept. 22-Oct. 2. He will receive its “A Tribute To…” award on Sept. 30 before the screening of his latest film “Bones and All,” which plays in the Gala Premiere section, and will hold a public masterclass on Oct. 1. The film world premieres in Venice tomorrow. Guadagnino, born in Palermo in 1971, has been one of the most internationally sought-after directors since the success of “Call Me By Your Name” in 2017, which Guadagnino presented in person at the Zurich fest.

Gregg Goldstein Becoming Nicholas Sparks’ literary agent and then film production president might not seem like the best preparation for making a romantic drama about cannibalism, but Per Capita Prods. founder Theresa Park is transitioning to a wider, edgier range of projects with ease.  Park is producing an animated children’s show based on Michael Buckley’s bestselling fantasy novel series “The Sisters Grimm” for Apple TV+. And she arrives in Venice for the Sept. 2 world premiere of “Bones and All,” Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’s novel about a couple (Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell) whose tastes run more towards hand eating than the hand holding found in Sparks’ works. The MGM/UA feature follows two other offbeat projects in Per Capita’s first year of releases: A24’s robot drama “After Yang” starring Colin Farrell and the Apple TV+ female-centered series “Roar” with Nicole Kidman. 

Timothee Chalamet rides through the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy on Wednesday (August 31) ahead of the 2022 Venice Film Festival.

Pat Saperstein Deputy EditorIt’s fall film festival season and there’s a whole new crop of literary-minded films coming to screens through the rest of the year. Since the films that premiere at festivals like Telluride, Venice, Toronto and New York are the ones that fill awards  nominations lists a few months later, the festivals provide an early peek at the movies that will be front and center at the Oscars, film critics awards and all the other end-of-year kudosfests.But there’s a way to get to know many of these works even before they premiere at festivals and come to streaming or movie screens: get familiar with the books they’re based on.

Armie Hammer when he released the trailer for his newest project, the cannibal romance film “Bones and All.”Hammer, 35, was accused of sexual assault, emotional abuse and cannibalism last year and the now-disgraced actor’s alleged scandals are being chronicled in a Discovery+ documentary series, “House of Hammer.”The trailer for “Bones and All” was released just a day after “House of Hammer” was announced and many fans were able to draw parallels between Hammer and Guadagnino’s film.However, the Italian filmmaker, 51, recently said the connection was a mere accident.“It didn’t dawn on me,” Guadagnino said in an interview with Deadline. “I realized this afterward when I started to be told of some of these innuendos on social media.”Guadagnino’s flesh-eating love story stars Hammer’s old “Call Me By Your Name” co-star Timothée Chalamet and is based on Camille DeAngelis’ 2015 book of the same name.According to the “Suspiria” director, he has been developing “Bones and All” for “a number of years.”“Any link with anything else exists only in the realm of social media, with which I do not engage,” he said.

Those lucky enough to be at the Venice Film Festival this year have only six days before Luca Guadagnino‘s latest “Bones And All” has its world premiere at the festival. And Guadagnino’s new film is one of the most anticipated on the Lido this year, a favorite for Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion.

Luca Guadagnino says his new movie has nothing to do with Armie Hammer. The 51-year-old director has reunited with Timothée Chalamet, 26, for new cannibal movie 'Bones and All' and he says it "didn't dawn" on him that people would associate the movie with Timothée's 'Call Me By Your Name' co-star Armie Hammer, who has been accused of expressing cannibalistic sexual fantasies. He told Deadline: "It didn’t dawn on me.