PART I - The Novel vs The Film
In a rare instance where the film adaptation ends up vastly superior in quality and execution to the novel it is based on, Luca Guadagnino's Bones & All supercedes all expectations and brings a new vision to the novel by Camille De Angelis.
Starting off strong, Taylor Russell's Maren has an indescribable depth not allowed to her book version; she's kind and interesting, frightened but curious, and beautifully brought to life - if you can call a near complete re-write “bringing to life”.
I was ecstatic when it became public that Russell would be playing the main character in this teenage gore-y romance, as it would, hopefully, give the movie a new face and new possibilities to explore, more possibilities than the novel ever allowed itself, as Book!Maren only wears black and despises everyone of the female gender, in particular those close in age to her - with the only exceptions being the love interests little sister, Kayla, as well as a kind old woman, Mrs Harmon, who lends her a helping hand in the beginning of the novel. Kayla, importantly, is the only female character besides the main character that does not meet some horrid ending in the novel, as all others are either killed, abandon Maren or end up being psychologically damaged old women, like the case of her grandmother, written as a direct counterpart to Mrs Harmon.
By changing Maren's race, Guadagnino eliminates the predictability and more ludicrous and overtly fictional aspects of the novel - the ones absolutely impossible to buy by anyone with a monochrome of common sense. This Maren doesn't get invited into nice old ladies homes, or is able to cheat the system and remain two months undetected in a university she does not attend or pay tuition to. This Maren doesn't have the privilege of not being noticed or suspected of anything, and that comes as a relief to anyone previously exposed to the novel.
Another great change was the inversion of parental roles. In the novel, Maren goes looking for her father after being abandoned by her mother, whom she grows to resent. In the movie, it is the other way around, affording the character some growth (which is not awarded to her in the novel, even if she really requires it) in the shape of looking for every little girl's north star - her mother - and sparing the reader the more unsavory aspects of Maren's hatred for women.
This Maren also has a backbone - she's witty and dry, in a charming way. And, to compensate for the fact that, unlike in the novel, we do not have the pleasure to live inside her head (although, in this version, I would very much enjoy doing so), the movie employs the interesting device of having her father leave her a tape recorder narrating their story together, unlike the simple note and cash envelope her mother originally leaves her in the novel.
We listen to bits and pieces of her story with her, whenever she has the courage to contemplate her wrongdoings, and meanwhile we follow Maren through an actual coming of age journey.
This time, there aren't any kind strangers who offer her a hand, or old ladies waiting with carrot cake and tea. Maren is alone, followed by a strange figure of a man who seemingly knows who, or what, she is.
It’s refreshing to follow only Maren without the interruption of having to care about side characters who only amount to becoming bags of meat, and watch her grow and develop throughout the movie into what could be considered a young adult.
The next important addition, also slightly modified, is Mark Rylance’s Sully.
He's most definitely different from what I had pictured, but boy does he stand out from the very first scene. This Sully isn’t cuddly and funny from the very beginning. He isn't trustworthy. Maren is, in fact, afraid of him. He's eery and speaks funny, and his very presence puts her on edge.
Of course, again, this Maren is a lot more intelligent than her NLOG counterpart. She knows how to take care of herself, she understands and recognises danger, and she knows that a young black girl in the middle of nowhere will never be worthy of the same media attention or worry as her white counterpart would - which keeps her guard constantly up.
PART II - Settling into the Plot
Mrs Harmon was a particularly interesting character for me. Not because she was well-written (she wasn't), but because Maren seems to cling to her memory, or the memory of the person she thought Mrs Harmon was, in order to feel a connection to a grandmother she never had.
For a hot minute, I assumed Mrs Harmon would not be in fact included in the movie adaptation of Bones & All, due to the direction it seemed to be going in. But she does make an appearance, eventually, and she sticks the landing a lot more than Maren's hallucinations in the novel.
Since in this version of the story it would be a lot harder to believe that Maren would be getting invited into old ladies homes for tea and biscuits, the young cannibal discovers, guided by her guardian demon Sully, the body of Mrs Harmon in the second floor of her home, which she invaded without knowledge with Sully.
In the scene, she's still not dead, but very close. And after being told to wait until the old woman's heart stops beating so they can feast on her corpse, Maren initially seems uneasy and uncomfortable with those actions, equating not calling for help with murder, something Sully seems to morally disagree with.
This scene change makes the relationship between Sully and Maren a lot more active, instead of the passive mentor-mentee one we see in the novel. Maren is actually convinced, either by Sully or her own rumbling stomach, to wait for Mrs Harmon's death.
Unlike in the novel, though, where he dances around the truth, this Sully explicitly tells Maren he does not kill people, while his book counterpart only states he only eats eople once they’re dead - giving him leeway to reveal later he never stated if they were already dead when he found them.
This little lie only cements the fact that Sully is in fact a big liar, and puts into question every interaction he's had with Maren until this moment, and all others they might have in the future.
Details from the original novel, like Mrs Harmon's cinema quality wedding pictures and her little figurine decorations straight from the 70s, are kept in the movie, but they are juxtaposed with the sound of Maren, accompanied by Sully, devouring Mrs Harmon's corpse, a symbolic family meal she never enjoyed with her actual father before.
The movie doesn’t lay heavy on the gore, which to me is an understandable pity, but a pity nonetheless; however, the sound of flesh ripping and bone and cartilage crunching, accompanied by a few bits and pieces of exposed open flesh, make for a chilling experience.
As for Sully, his hair rope is one of the most fascinating subplots of the novel. In writing, Maren first sees him woving Mrs Harmon's hair into the rope after he's finished with her body, but here he explicitly brings the rope out to show her as he tells her of his first kill, a story also slightly changed from the novel, as in both versions it was his grandfather's corpse he ate, while they were waiting for the undertaker, but only in this one he was found after the act, by his mother, which is significant as Maren is on her journey to find her own mother, and perhaps the lack of female guidence in his life relates to Sully’s fixation on Maren, and his seemingly preferred targets being women.
Maren's father, in his tape, voices some of the anxieties the protagonist had in the novel, anxieties that were mostly unfounded as her mother had no way of disproving them. He states he doesn’t know if he loved her, but he didn't hate her; that he could've been better; that he didn't want to think her a monster.
Now, in the novel, it is later revealed Maren's father doesn’t know her name nor gender, as her mother left him before she was born after discovering his secret. In the movie, that was not possible, but it still manages to develop Maren's relationship with her father a lot better and more poignantly than the novel's author ever could.
Although both versions take advantage of Maren's olfactory sense, only Guadagnino's version incorporates it in a way that is central to her development. From her very first onscreen bloodtasting, Maren's sense of smell plays a key part in her character, especially after being mentored by Sully to make good use of it.
And, without a nice-guy Walmart attendant looking to take advantage of a broke and lonely homeless girl, it is Maren’s sense of smell that eventually leads her to discover the truth about Lee.
PART III - Lee
I must admit, I absolutely despised him in the novel, so it wouldn't take much to improve Lee in my opinion.
His nonchalant attitude, full of disdain for others, disrespect for women he deemed whores and mixed signals with Maren infuriated me, and I was left confused as to how that could be attractive to Maren, choosing to blame it on naivite, hormones and abandonment issues.
On the other hand, movie Lee is incredible. We're introduced to him in a similar way as his book version, in a grocery store (NOT a Walmart) while defending a woman from the verbal harassment of a drunk asshole who becomes his meal.
This time, he's not the one who discovers Maren feasting on some Walmart employee trying to take sexual advantage of her. Instead, she finds him after he eats his victim, where he very bluntly and directly tells her, without so much as an attempt to clean the crime scene, that she's welcome to his leftovers.
She asks for a ride and, although he's reserved and not a fan of roadtrip buddies, he senses her distress and allows her to tag along in pursuit of her family, as they seem to be heading in the same direction.
Furthermore, this Maren isn’t proud, which helps endear her to Lee. She's not above asking for help, for guidance or for company. She has gaps in her memory, unlike her book counterpart, and is trying to remember, as the book refers to, all the names written in her heart, piecing together meal by meal with the help of her father's tape.
This Lee is also spontaneous and human; he cracks jokes and listens to KISS. He's energetic and unapologetic about his life, has a very particular style, tattoos, and is made incessantly more tolerable by the script and Chalamet's colourful performance.
Luca Guadagnino's movie is incredibly honest and humane, shifting its focus from being a stor moved solely by cannibalism to one featuring cannibalism in the background of developing the first years of adulthood, finding one's self in the world and learning to build connections with those around you. And although fast paced, it's much slower than the book and gives the viewer time to understand and appreciate the characters.
The set design is also fantastic. Not only the shots of the main couple driving around, but the way every building and residence is made to be an abandoned, but loved, home. One that belonged to someone like them, in terms of social class, which makes the characters, especially Maren, feel at ease.
There are also several lingering close up shots of the characters faces, up close and personal as if we are prey faced by our predators, their breath heavy on our necks. These shots are usually followed by nature shots, further cementing Guadagnino's tie between the characters and the wilderness.
As for the costuming, I truly adored Maren's loose fitting dresses and braless tops, as well as Lee's unpolished grunge look. It gives them the wild and free appearance the characters needed, and is a big improvement from Maren’s all black outfits in the novel.
Speaking of unpolished, Anna Cobb's performance as Kayla (Lee’s sister) did take me away from the movie for a couple minutes, but as she was gone as fast as she appeared, it wasn't of much importance.
As we continued along this two hour ride, amongst beautiful sceneries, visits to slaughterhouses and abandoned homes, both places where they are safe as they are the danger within and not the other way around, we get time to truly witness the connection forming between two souls who find each other through their shared horrific acts. It’s romantic and beautiful, and incredibly pure as it highlights the immense talent of both actors.
They fall in lovely honestly and earnestly, naked with each other even through their secrets. There's no unnecessary rudeness in movie!Lee’s behaviour. He's kind and caring and not trying to drive Maren away. He's as open as he can be, even while talking about the horrible things he did in the past.
There's something beastly about their freedom. Surrounded by nature, while their own tells them to mutilate and consume, like predators, they're at home. They are part of the environment, they are the environment. And once they are put in the positiuon where they have to become beasts, they do so without question or hesitation, and without losing their underlying humanity.
Guadagnino surprises the book audience once more by doing what DeAngelis refused to do, or didn't have the creative means to achieve: he introduces us to others apart from the core three. While in the novel they are only mentioned in passing as existing and being out there, Maren herself never meets any others besides Sully and Lee, which is an incredible let down as it makes DeAngelis universe even faker and more difficult to believe in.
But that's not the case for Guadagnino's. He brings in two men, wild like our protagonists but in a way that signals danger. Those men truly behave like beasts by choice, having completely lost their capability of empathising in a way that is akin to the worst in humanity, isolating themselves into their own way of thinking and living.
Through Jake and Brad, however, who have embraced and found pride in their eating habits, we are presented to a completely different category of eater - one that lays in the spectrum between our protagonists and Sully.
Of course it is easy to believe, and come to the conclusion that, in a world where people have the undeniable urge and strenght to mutilate and consume a human being with their own bare hands and teeth, much like a lion would a gazelle, there would be those who do it simply for the fun of it, for the sport. And those people slowly lose parts of themselves they can never get back, for they have completely lost respect for human life.
Jake and Brad also confirm an aspect of this world that is only speculated about in the novel, that there are people out there who know about the eaters, and choose not to do anything about it. Travis, who helps Maren in the novel and is thankfully kept out of the movie, has a theory that law enforcement is plenty aware of the cannibals existence, but for one reason or another do not act against them - a theory that becomes fact in the movie.
The two pairs interactions with each other demonstrate a key difference between Maren and Lee: one of them is capable of keeping appearances for their own safety, and the other isn’t.
Maren, unseasoned and young, dismisses the claims of Brad and refuses to laugh at his jokes, while Lee attempts to blend in by either being or acting fascinated by the pairs revelation that it is indeed possible to consume even the bones of a person, treating it as a sort of initiation into their world - a proper christening.
Such concept does not exist in the novel, as Maren implies that she has been eating bones, at least some, for as long as she's been able to chew, and that all she leaves behind are indeed piles of remnants she doesn’t wish or is incapable of digesting, which are promptly bagged and discarded. Something else that adds to the methodical and inhumane way in which book Maren deals with her hunger, making it difficult to root for or sympathise with the character.
Her disregard for her own safety is once more shown when Maren refuses to even pretend not to be disgusted by the discovery that cop Jake is not in fact an eater, but choses to consume human flesh out of curiosity, or what Brad calls being a “groupie”.
The two men are visibly annoyed and suspicious that the young couple doesn't share their sadism, and after taunting Lee and mocking Maren, the couple's encounter with these two savages so far from their own concept of morality and who seem to view feeding as a game, turns sour.
We are reminded of Sully's advice to Maren in the beginning of the film, never eat an eater, but it is clear not everyone follows this rule - especially not Brad and Jake.
In my ludicrous theorising about the many layers of the world of Bones & All, I came up with the idea that the men's paranoia, much like Sully's, is in fact a consequence of their refusal to commit to that rule. In a way, this is their true cannibalism, the consumption of the flesh of their brethren, not of us mere mortals, but of eaters like them, who exist as their own subspecies. Sort of like how humans have been found to descend into madness if we consume a human brain, eaters descend into madness by consuming other eaters, or indeed only consuming flesh. And slowly and surely, that becomes the only nutrient they seek and require.
PART IV - At the Carnival
Yet another scene that was particularly happy to see better adaptded was the carnival.
In the novel, while in a semi-romantic getaway at a carnival, which could never be called romantic as Lee refuses to allow Maren to get close to him, Maren and Lee spot a rude teenage park worker who is demeaning and cheats a little boy out of his prize - an ET plushie.
Lauren, the carnival worker and yet another misogynistic caricature of women barely deserving of the title “character”, a specialty of author Camille DeAngelis, becomes Lee's dinner after he lures her into a secluded area, taking advantage of her perceived exaggerated promiscuity.
In the film, however, the carnival worker is a man, who just the same tells a little boy he's wasting his money as the game is rigged, then refuses to award him the prize, all the while Lee watches attentively. Lee flirts with the worker, shooting him sly smiles and cracking a joke, before asking him what the city has to offer. Interested, the worker offers him weed and they agree to meet.
Now, the murder of a gay character might seem unnecessary and gratuituous, but Luca Guadagnino does it well - framing the victim not so much as deserving on account of being gay, but on account of being simply a bad person, and reminding the audience Lee often targets those of perceived dubious morality, something crucial to his backstory.
Later on, Maren isn't shocked to discover that her father's last words to her are akin to “I hope you get better” as she herself wishes that she could get better. In a scene that alludes to Maren's curiosity towards religion mentioned in the novel, she states she “should pray that one day she'll wake up and find out they've built a wall around her”, which eventually plays into her discovery of her mother's state and refute to ending up like her.
Maren is, after all, a creature of the wilderness. She is wild and free, and supposed to be so, but her fear of her own actions makes her wish for the exact opposite, something that goes, lliterally and figuratively, against her nature.
As the circus worker appears, Lee nonchalantly excuses himself and asks for a couple minutes until he's finished. Intrigued, Maren spies in the truck as Lee passionately kisses the worker, then goes straight for his neck, which his partner describes as kinky.
In yet another allusion to the similarities between consuming flesh literally and consuming it sexually, we watch a curious Maren seemingly experience her own sexual awakening by watching Lee hunt; and find out that Lee himself doesn't discriminate gender when it comes to feeding - and perhaps when it comes to anything else.
The men disappear into the cornfield, and Maren follows, expecting to find Lee engaged in the act of eating, but instead finding him amidst sexual foreplay, which he seems to use as an excuse to then stab the worker in the neck. Finally, as Lee notices Maren watching, he simply calls her over, unashamed that she might've witnessed him engaged in more than one act of pleasure, and the two feast together, something that can only be described as a sort of macabre threesome.
The conclusion to the story of the carnaval worker, only called “Booth Man” in the credits, is predictable, although still well-executed enough to be chilling. Here, instead of being left to rot after becoming a sport kill for Lee, as his female counterpart is in the novel, the couple steal his car and drive to his address. As Maren is able to clean herself before their arrival (using the tissues Booth Man hid in his car), she proposes herself to investigate the scene, as the lights in his house are on and someone else seems to be there. Maren sneaks near the window, only to be nauseated by the view: his wife on the phone, worryingly attempting to contact someone, with their infant in her arms.
Maren panics as she realises what the consequences of their actions will be, undoubedly exasperated by destroying a family and leaving a single mother behind - something that must hit close to home. In an attempt to confirm her suspicions, she runs back to the car and discovers pictures of his family, while Lee convinces her to abandon the vehicle and flee.
After already doing a fantastic job, Guadagnino brings a new level of anxiety as Maren encounters her grandmother's name in a phone book and drives to the address, but this time, the woman initially wants nothing to do with her. Unlike the novel, it's revealed her parents didn't marry, and her mother instead fled with her father after her family's disapproval of the union.
As the movie is very clearly set in the late 80s, and with the decision to cast Taylor Russell and Andre Holland in the roles of Maren and Frank Yearly, adds a new layer to Maren's story, one that is intrinsically connected to her feelings of not belonging anywhere, and need to find herself away from the company of the people who once surrounded her.
Originally, Maren's father's adoptive family assumed her son's relationship with Janelle was only a passing fancy, and that is why they refused the union, as they hadn’t even met the woman. In the adaptation, however, we are presented with a white suburban seemingly middle-class family refusing the union between their daughter and a black man, in what was likely the late 1960s into 1970. Their rejection of the union being such that they didn’t even bother keeping contact enough to find out about the existence of their granddaughter.
From then on the story shifts. In the novel, Maren's father was adopted by a couple who lost a son, and he was raised by a bitter woman who refused to forget the son she lost, until becoming a park ranger (something the author throws in for shock value, as one of Maren's early victims was a boy who wished to become a park ranger), and meeting her mother.
In the film, Maren's mother was adopted by an infertile couple after being left behind a sheriff's station. She went to college, doing two years of undergrad before, according to her grandmother's biased opinion, being “convinced to leave” by her father.
In a semi-confrontation, and after being told her mother's dead, Maren declares she knows her grandmother must've done things to cover up her mother hurting people. It is then Mrs Kerns reveals her daughter isn’t actually dead, but in a mental hospital.
Drawing parallels to Maren's own feelings of isolation and believing she was too dangerous to be left in the outside world, she discovers her mother in fact chose to sign herself into the institution, believing it was a way to protect others from herself.
In the insitution, she’s greeted by a female nurse, who guides her through walls of screaming mental patients, and tells her she's happy Maren finally came, as well as reports that her mother's state, although tranquil for now, wasn't always so, as she used to be aggressive, threatening to hurt others and herself.
PART V - Maren's Roots
Finally, we are introduced to Janelle.
Chloe Sevigny's Janelle, like her male counterpart, has seemingly lost all her wildfire. She comes to us in the corner, confused and afraid like a wounded animal, both her hands missing and her hair chopped short. Maren reveals she came alone, but her mother is unable to speak due to heavy medication, and nurse Gail tells Janelle she fetched the letter addressed to her daughter, which has been kept in a safe for 18 years, awaiting her arrival.
In her letter, Janelle explores many subjects. She believes Maren has come because her father revealed the truth. She tells Maren her father wasn’t aware of her true nature until it was too late, and that although she promised never to hurt either of them, they couldn't be sure, and so she left. She also states she doesn't believe love is real for people like them, that they belong locked up in a place like her own. She apologises, and, mimicking the novel, calls Maren “Little Yearly”, a much more heartfelt and less technical and exposition-only piece than the journal her father kept in the novel.
The moment comes to a halt as the letter ends with her mother referring to them as monsters, and stating that since the world isn't for them, she will have to help her daughter out of it.
After a quick altercation where her mother attempts to kill her, Maren flees and, as Lee tries to help her, they have an argument that ends in a fight.
Having her mother abandon her out of the fear of hurting Maren and being seemingly unaware until much too late that her daughter could be like her, then attempting to kill her to rid the world of what she considers to be a monster but also to try and spare Maren of the pain and suffering that comes with the life they must lead, adds a sensibility that was missing in the novel, and makes the connection between Maren and her mother feel stronger and more vivid. Maren experiences incredibly conflicting feelings about herself and her life, much like her mother, and the confrontation and discovery that she's not alone in these feelings seems to enrage her more than comfort her, perhaps because she was hoping her mother would be a beacon that could guide her in how to lead an actual life even with their issues.
Those feelings of uncertainty and confusion lead her to once again self-isolate, this time leaving all their money in the truck and abandoning Lee as he sleeps, who later wakes up exasperated to find out she's no longer there.
Maren doesn’t spend much time alone, however, as she's quickly found by SUlly while walking along the highway. It doesn't take long for her to deduce he's followed her all along, and that her intimate moments with Lee were not in fact as intimate as she had hoped.
Sully spend the rest of their meetup attempting to convince Maren to get in his van, reinforcing that his interest in her is purely a father-daughter bond. Maren stands her ground, telling Sully she doesn't feel comfortable around him, prompting an outburst of anger where he calls her every name in the book.
After he drives off, a shaken up Maren enters a diner, staring out at a Library and a Police Station, two locations significant in the novel, and destroys her father's tape, in a scene that can only be described as the final goodbye to the Maren we met in the novel, the one who had written several letters intended to be left at police stations all over the country. This Maren knows better than to willingly give herself up to the cops.
Months pass, and Maren migrates back to Lee's hometown, approaching his sister for his address, where we are again gifted with the subpar performance of Anna Cobb as Kayla, who serves as an exposition device to unlock Lee's past to Maren: he was arrested and spent three nights in jail after a fight with his alcoholic and violent father, resulting in the disappearance of the man. According to his sister, the blood found by the police on Lee was in fact his own, which is why they were forced to let him go.
After reuniting, the couple heads west, where Lee helps Maren piece together the missing pieces of his story. It was indeed Lee's blood on him that night. His father, in a drunken rage, tried to “rip him open with his teeth”, making it the first time Lee could smell their own kind. After hitting him over the head causing him to pass out, Lee dragged his body to an abandoned barn, where the body stayed semi-alive for three days until Lee came back and ate him.
After finally revealing his past to her, and finding only forgiveness and understanding from Maren, the pair solidify their love by vowing to attempt to live a normal life.
Refreshingly, we are then treated to Maren and Lee's happy home life, with Maren working at a bookstore at her university. She lives with Lee, goes to the movies, they cook breakfast together and create their own little safe home. And she does that on her own terms, without harming anyone and deserving every bit of it. The director even treats us to a shot of a knitting circle, a quick nod to the only group of women who were kind to Maren in the novel in a scene that lasted, quite literally, half a page. And none of them were named.
Unfortunately for the couple, not all is well, as their idyllic simple life is interrupted by the sudden reappearance of the grim reaper himself, Sully, who breaks into their apartment after Lee goes out and takes Maren hostage. He claims to have unfinished business, and Maren seems to believe he'll kill her, in a scene that borders on rape.
After a few excruciating minutes of silent torture, while the audience is left at the edge of their seat expecting something brutal to happen one way or the other, the final act begins by Maren and Lee delivering Sully his ending - a plastic bag and several stabs later, their tormentor dies after being dragged into a bathtub and, still alive, ripped open and disemboweled by Maren in a final act of revenge.
This scene is particularly fascinating, as it solidifies the couple as killers together. It is the first time we see them murder someone onscreen together, and the most graffic killing of the movie, which makes it twice as significant, seeming like a sort of bonding ritual that unites them in blood - a marriage of monsters, if you will.
While in a transe state, Maren then makes her way to their bedroom and grabs Sully's hair rope, which peaks from out of his bag, where she identifies Kayla's hair. She doesn't get much time to react, as she realises Lee had been stabbed by Sully in the commotion, who perforated his lung, and is slowly dying from the wounds.
She suggests the hospital as they need to act fast, but as Lee realises the danger that would pose to them, and after noticing his sister's hair in the rope, Lee begs Maren to eat him, bubbling about how much he loves her. They share a final kiss, and he pushes her head down, in a semi-sexual act that is equally poorly received by Maren as it is by every other woman who's been targeted with it - altought in a completely different way.
The house is bleached clean, thrice I assume, and the movie comes to an end, bringing a much more emotional, satisfying and earth-shattering conclusion than the one of a drunk Maren eating Lee in bed after he attempts to sexually assault her in bed.
PART VI - IN CONCLUSION
I'm apprehensive in calling a director of only 53 years a genius, but after being gifted by works like Challlengers, Suspiria, and seeing his fantastic elevation of a novel that can be described as underwhelming at best, there is no other word for Guadagnino.
His work on Bones & All is commendable both in terms of original filmmaking and adaptation, even if I at times failed to consider this an adaptation at all, given is incredible execution.
I would especially like to thank Guadagnino for his choice of omission in two specific plot points:
Firstly, the excusion of Sully as Maren's grandfather, which he is in the novel, his motive being that he seemingly hates children, and his own family, and intends to completely annihilate his gene pool, for no strong reason other than being a sociopath.
Secondly, the decision to completely remove the character of Travis from the narrative. Pardon my vulgarity, but fuck Travis, he absolutely sucked and had no business being included in the novel in the first place.
Travis was the male nurse who initially welcomed Maren into the psychological institution her father was a patient in. He had been caring for Maren's father since his very first year there, having formed a bond that allowed him to read the man's journal, something that shocked Maren, and discover the truth about his nature, as well as Maren's, which sent him in a spiral of researching eaters and even encountering other, that being how he discovered that eaters can ass their condition through DNA, something that hadn’t occured to Maren's father, the realisation of which made him go crazy enough to eat his own hand, something he seems deeply ashamed of in the novel.
Travis is, however, a pathetic little man who begs Maren to eat him for the sole reason that he feels his life didn't amount to anything and, after his mother's death and inability to built connections with other, he believes he is alone in the world and wishes to die, but wants his death to mean something, making it very clear he feels rejected and sad none of the eaters he encountered were willing to eat him and that this, being wanted by someone even as just a meal, is the only way he could feel like he fulfilled some kind of purpose on earth.
He does die in the novel, being seemingly murdered by Sully or someone else, but he's just such a nothing filler character that the choice to not have him onscreen should've already awarded Guadagnino a best adaptation Academy Award.
And back to the director, there is one change I believe made all the difference in this adaptation, more than any other: the decision to make Maren's journey about finding her mother instead of her father.
Through this lense, we are presented with a story we seem to see more and more on screen, and that resonates with any woman under the age of 35 - the idea that we inherit our sins from our mothers, and eventually live long enough to watch those sins fester inside of us as we become our mothers, unable to escape the generational trauma that led us here, until we are strong enough to break that cycle.
Interestingly, we see the other side of that coin, the destructive nature of toxic masculinity being inherited by little boys from their fathers, in Lee, whose choice to break the cycle doesn't fully happen until his connection to Maren becomes stronger, and he decides to become more empathetic towarrds his victims.
It is interesting, at the end, that he considers Maren's consumption of his body as an act of love, calling back to both Janelle's attempt to consume her daughter and Lee's actual consumption of his father. Could it be, that under the heavy drug sedation, Janelle genuinely believed she was protecting her daughter? Could it be that Lee, while consuming his father's flesh, also saw riding the world of him an act of love? If not love for his father, then for his mother and sister?
It is impossible to ask ourselves this questions while reading the novel, as DeAngelis Bones & All has an air of comedic failure that borders on satire, lacking the depth and feeling necessary to discuss a subject like cannibalism, or to bring forth the symbolic nature of consuming human flesh as a way to encounter closeness and form literal bonds with others.
In conclusion, Grazie Luca Guadagnino.