chalamet

Source: Ben Dalton

Timothée Chalamet

“Societal collapse is in the air,” said US actor Timothée Chalamet at the press conference for Luca Guadagnino’s Venice Competition title Bones And All on the Lido on Friday. 

Bones And All follows a young woman, played by Taylor Russell, surviving on the margins of society due to her cannibalistic tendencies. Chalamet plays a young man with the same impulses.

“I can’t imagine what it is to grow up with the onslaught of social media,” the 26 year-old actor said. “It was a relief to play characters [in Bones And All] that are wrestling with an internal dilemma, absent the need to immediately go on Reddit or Twitter, Instagram or TikTok, to figure out where they fit in.”

“Without casting judgement on that – if you can find your tribe there, then all power,” added the actor. “But I think it’s tough to be alive now, societal collapse is in the air – it smells like it. Without being pretentious, that’s why, hopefully, these movies matter. That’s the role of the artist, or so I’m told - to shine a light on what’s going on.”

Russell agreed: “Opinions seem so flooded in your every day in such a drastic and severe way, it’s so scary because the hope is really that you can find your own compass within all of it. That seems like it’s a difficult task now.”

Producing future

Bones And All is adapted by David Kagjanich from Camille DeAngelis’ 2015 novel of the same name. It is Chalamet’s second collaboration with Italian filmmaker Guadagnino, after 2017’s Call Me By Your Name. Chalamet also has his first producer credit on Bones And All, and while he “can’t say that I was helping organise schedules or anything like that,” he thanked Guadagnino for being ”fatherly with me in guiding me in that process for the first time,” as well as Kagjanich and DeAngelis.

“It’s something I hope to continue doing and hopefully even be able to make things that I’m not in, that help bring voices and faces to screen that historically don’t get the opportunities so much,” said Chalamet.

The MGM film is also produced by Guadagnino, Kajganich, Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Lorenzo Mieli, Marco Morabito, Gabriele Moratti, Theresa Park and Peter Spears. It is slated for a worldwide rollout from October onwards, with United Artists Releasing distributing in the US and Warner Bros in international territories.

Bones And All plays in Competition today in Venice. The festival continues until Saturday, September 10; tomorrow’s world premieres include Laura Poitras’ All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, and Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener.