Tag: Tracy Letts

The Pet Shop Boys’ synth-pop banger “Paninaro” is a tongue-in-cheek anthem to hedonistic Italian youth culture of the 1980s, its label-whore obsessions and its blithe superficiality. Fittingly, the song’s thumping beat is heard twice, real loud, in Rosebush Pruning, Karim Aїnouz’s high-gloss, pitch-dark satire about an American family described by one of its scions as mediocre, vapid egotists, who will never have to work thanks to a large inheritance. Fashion and techno music are the chief interests of the surviving members, one of whom dreams of Bottega Veneta loafers floating in the sky.

The Taylor family left New York for the Catalonia coast six years earlier and have never quite managed to fit in, which is not surprising given the insular bubble of circle-jerk flattery that have built.

Their late mother (Pamela Anderson) was drawn to the region by her passion for the architecture of Antonio Gaudí, while her widower (Tracy Letts) and their four adult children, Ed (Callum Turner), Anna (Riley Keough), Jack (Jamie Bell) and Robert (Lukas Gage), revere it as the birthplace of Cristóbal Balenciaga. The fact that the Spanish designer was actually from a town in the Basque Country on the opposite coast is likely part of the joke.

Loosely inspired by Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut Fists in the Pocket, the scathing takedown of the bourgeoisie that put the Italian director on the map, Rosebush Pruning was penned by Efthimis Filippou. It has a close kinship with the deadpan absurdism of the Greek screenwriter’s collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos on The Lobster and especially Dogtooth.

The peculiar energy, creepy sexual vibes and deliberate acid reflux of Aїnouz’s movie will make it an acquired taste. Or not. What it takes from Bellocchio is primarily the outline of a dysfunctional family of four siblings with a blind parent — in this case the father, not the mother — a young man prone to epileptic seizures and a multiple-murder plot that includes a fatal clifftop fall.

The objective of the killings, in both cases, is to free the adored eldest brother to break away from the family’s incestuous grip and live with the woman he loves. In the new iteration that would be Jack and his girlfriend Martha (Elle Fanning), whose introduction to the Taylors is one of many scenes played out with squirming discomfort.

Given that he can’t see, the pervy father (neither parent is named) asks Anna to describe Martha for him, starting with her handbag — “Is it Bottega, or not?” he demands to know — and continuing with her breasts. Bristling with jealousy, Anna calls them “average, at best,” then proceeds to break down her outfit, judging the dress to be from a premium fast-fashion brand like Zara or Cos, and correctly identifying the luxury items of the handbag and a Cartier ring as gifts from Jack. No one mentions the term “gold-digger,” but they are all thinking it.

Not even Ed’s bizarre “welcome to the family” spiel causes Martha to bolt. Hilariously, he reassures her that sadness and disappointment are only temporary by recounting his search for an impossible-to-find Comme des Garçons bag, which turned up online and was gone before he could iron out a credit card glitch. He wept for an entire day, but then scored an even better bag from Raf Simons, made of more luxurious leather. Turner manages to put across this supreme shallowness with total sincerity.

(As a supremely shallow person who spends an inordinate amount of time and money scrolling through sites like Mr. Porter, SSENCE and Editorialist for luxury menswear markdowns, I have to confess I found this funny. Others might not.)

One reason Martha isn’t put off is possibly that she’s not much different. While chafing at Jack’s hesitance to commit, she nods to the massive chunk of real estate porn with glorious sea views that they have just toured with the broker. “I’m sick of having to beg for basic things!” she huffs.

Maybe this material — and certainly this knockout ensemble — could have delivered a movie with a less rarefied tone, if indeed the filmmakers were interested in that. But Rosebush Pruning is not funny enough to get away with its abrasiveness or make its unsympathetic characters palatable. The heady sensuality of Aїnouz’s best films (Invisible Life, Madame Satã) is somewhat smothered by the cold cerebral mischief of Filippou’s writing. It makes the movie seem counterfeit — way more Yorgos than Karim, but second-rate Yorgos.

That’s not to say the film is ever dull. Ed likes to invent proverbs and sayings, and the title pertains to one of the more coherent of them — “People love roses. Families are rosebushes. Rosebushes need pruning.” The vicious means by which that pruning happens and the underlying abusive motivations for it provide intrigue. If you’re wondering why Mrs. Taylor’s teeth are so unnaturally white, don’t worry, a sicko explanation will be forthcoming, as will the nasty particulars of Mr. Taylor’s nightly tooth-brushing ritual.

It’s a kick to watch Keough’s Anna in baby blue go-go boots get high on the sexual frisson between her and pretty much the entire family. She’s funny flirting with the politely distanced local butcher and complaining afterwards to Jack that he was hitting on her. Gage’s Robert is also no slouch in the come-on department, gushing over Jack’s appearance and enticing him by wearing women’s lingerie and doing you don’t want to know what else. (Marco Bellocchio certainly never had anyone chewing on his brother’s cumsock.)

Bell and Turner expertly convey the charisma of Jack and Ed while also revealing that there’s something a little unsavory about them both. Ed is seen at intervals on a mic, practicing his imitation of Jack’s voice by repeating the words likely to be engraved on his tombstone: “Edward Taylor, 1991 to 2025.” Almost every bit of weird shit that happens foreshadows a later development. That includes the family’s monthly offering of a sheep carcass in the forest to keep the wolves that supposedly tore Mrs. Taylor apart from killing some other poor unfortunate.

That’s one of many visually striking sequences shot by talented French cinematographer Hélène Louvart, its lush darkness contrasting with the dazzling color and light that fill the widescreen frame elsewhere. Matthew Herbert’s score is highly effective, notably in the first wolf scene, where it builds to a molto agitato orchestral hysteria. And Bina Daigeler’s costumes are a hoot, ostentatiously fashionable and expensive and sexy. (Gage scores the best fuckboy mesh shirt since Franz Rogowski in Passages.)

The outcome of the family’s skulduggery, revealed over the end credits, should be a lip-smacking wicked delight. But there are too few grounding remnants of humanity in the characters to make us share in the shamelessly cynical pleasures of ruthless victory. There’s no shortage of stylish craft here and much to enjoy in the performances, but ultimately, Rosebush Pruning is too glib to work, leaving only an acrid aftertaste.