Rosebush Pruning

Family can be hell. But tearing them apart on film is pure paradise for us bloodthirsty drama queens. A hunger that gonzo Brazilian filmmaker, visual artist and festival fave Karim Aïnouz (Motel Destino) is more than happy to satiate with his latest bonkers, horny offering.

Leading the stacked cast is Callum Turner, the latest grist for the James Bond rumour mill, who provides narration. He plays Ed, a sharp-suited, cold-hearted chap in an astonishingly privileged pack of cutthroat fashion-lovers. They have little in common besides their impossibly priced threads.

Under the imperious command of their blind patriarch father (Tracy Letts), the clan includes Ed’s older brother Jack (Jamie Bell), who drinks animal blood for kinks and fetishises the gun purportedly used to kill Gianni Versace. Epilepsy-prone baby bro Robert (Lukas Gage) dons lingerie for kicks. Their equally pent-up sister, Anna (Riley Keough), will have what anyone’s having. Each wants shot of the rest, though Robert wants Jack to shoot his incestuous shot with him. (What is it about The White Lotus cast members?)

Anna mercilessly mauls Jack’s girlfriend, Martha, who is pointedly lower class but still pretty spoiled and insists he must move out. Anna latches onto Martha’s dress, damning it as being from either Kos or Zara in this year’s answer to Triangle of Sadness’s Balenciaga/H&M moment. Fitting, as Rosebush Pruning feels snipped from both Ruben Östlund’s eat-the-rich satire and Pasolini’s Teorema.

Why are they like this? Don’t they have it all in their stiflingly gilded cage? Aren’t they sufficiently cashed-up to fly the nest if they want, as Jack only half-heartedly attempts, much to Martha’s chagrin?

This a feast for those who like their cinema deliriously queer

A protean explanation is offered, in that they’re all sequestered in a brutalist mansion deep in the woods where their mother (Pamela Anderson) was torn apart by wolves. But we get the impression, via Lett’s toothpaste-abusing daddy, that their savagery is simply hereditary.

The crossfire yields plenty of Succession-style comedy. Taking a bite out of our obscenely capitalist era, Greek weird wave screenwriter Efthimis Filippou’s script (a loose spin on Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket) isn’t quite as sharp as you’d like, but still remains ferocious fun. 

This twisted world is brought to life in gleaming greens and vermillions by La Chimera cinematographer Hélène Louvart and via a pumping score Matthew Herbert score that takes notes from the Pet Shop Boys. Rosebush Pruning is a fabulous feast for the eyes and ears – and those who like their cinema deliriously queer.

Rosebush Pruning premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.