“Passion, love, sex, money…” The Pet Shop Boys’ 1986 hit “Paninaro” acts as an unofficial manifesto for Rosebush Pruning, an outrageous pansexual pantomime so out-there that “What the actual f*ck?” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Co-scripted by Efthimis Filippou — a pioneer of the Greek “Weird Wave” with his regular collaborator Yorgos Lanthimos — Karim Aïnouz’s latest plays like a sleazy Eurotrash companion piece to Dogtooth, a story so polymorphous in its perversity that words like “gay” and “straight” are meaningless, even as a starting point. Early Almodóvar is an easy, visual comparison, but there’s a joyful meanness at play here that’s never been part of the Spanish master’s vernacular; throw in a hefty dash of Joe Orton, however, and you’ll be starting to get there.
It begins on a beach in Spain, where Edward (Callum Turner) is schooling George, a new-found friend of just ten days’ standing, in the ways of high fashion. George, on holiday from Athens, is middle-aged and hopelessly uncool, but Edward likes him anyway. “He’s the kind of guy I’d like to see naked,” he says in the film’s framing voiceover, out of the blue — and if that sounds a bit forward, buckle up. From this very moment, everything and anything is so instantly sexualized that things can only escalate, and they do, with an impressive degree of commitment to the pursuit of transgression in all its myriad forms. That it does so is largely thanks to its phenomenal cast of Gen Z-ers and Millennials whose fearless performances belie the supposed prudishness of their peers.
Guided by Edward, we meet the rest of his family, who were moved from New York to Catalonia by their mother (Pamela Anderson) six months prior. Their mother is dead, we learn, having been torn apart by wolves(!), leaving her blind husband (Tracy Letts) alone with their son Edward, his brothers Jack (Jamie Bell) and Robert (Lukas Gage) and their sister Anna (Riley Keough). All of them are in love with Jack, in the most incestuous ways imaginable, so when Jack brings home a new girlfriend, Martha (Elle Fanning), it does not go well.
Edward advertises his shallowness from the outset (“I don’t write, I don’t read”), and his family are cut from the same cloth — he calls them “lazy” and “superficial” is almost reverential tones — interested only in music and fashion. The latter is an understatement; each change of costume is a subplot in itself, from Robert’s new socks to Anna’s baby-blue go-go boots, which deserve a whole movie of their own. They are horrified, then, when Martha appears, a classically trained amateur guitarist who wears dresses from Zara and sports a non-functioning Swatch. “You can only imagine how badly she dresses, Dad!” Anna wails, determined to separate the pair at any cost and not lacking in support from the others.
In any other movie, Anna would be the main event, and Keough rises to the challenge with the most lascivious performance since Selma Blair as N-cup stripper Ursula Udders in John Waters’ A Dirty Shame. Everybody else, however, has read the same memo, and the film gradually reveals itself as an insane ensemble piece, with each character getting their moment in the sun, whether it’s Dad and his rinse-your-eyes-with-bleach toothbrushing ritual or Robert and… Have I got this wrong, or does he try to carve a vagina in his upper thigh with a knife? (No, no, please don’t tell me). Through all of this, keep your eye on Elle Fanning’s horrified face as the whole freak scene unfolds in front of her eyes.
Is there a plot? Well, there was in Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 film Fists in the Pocket, which inspired Rosebush Pruning, but Aïnouz and Filippou don’t really lean into that. Instead, the story focuses mostly on Jack and his attempts to leave his almost literally vampiric family by any means necessary, even though he is by no means any more normal than the others, given his fascination for blood, animal or menstrual. If you’re still reading after all that, this insane black comedy might well be worth your while, a bad-taste riot that surpasses Aïnouz’s last film Motel Destino (2024) in all its candy-colored decadence. These satanic majesties request the pleasure of your company. Dare you accept?
Title: Rosebush Pruning
Festival: Berlin (Competition)
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Screenwriters: Karim Aïnouz and Efthimis Filippou, inspired by Marco Bellochio’s 1965 film Fists In The Pocket
Cast: Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Lukas Gage, Elena Anaya with Tracy Letts and Elle Fanning and Pamela Anderson
Distributor: Mubi
Running time: 1 hr 35 mins