“Rosebush Pruning”: More Caricature Than Provocation

That Rosebush Pruning ends with a note announcing that the film is inspired by I pugni in tasca (Marco Bellocchio, 1965) merely adds insult to injury. The portrait of extreme family dysfunction written by Efthimis Filippou (Alps, Dogtooth) in his first work outside Greek cinema becomes a caricature of his own style, where what aims to be provocative and transgressive turns out to be an inconsistent prank.

Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz, who gave us The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (2019), has failed to update for the twenty-first century a work and a concept that once revolutionized the cinematic landscape, captivating both audiences and critics alike. At the 76th Berlinale—whose program has not been the most brilliant in its history—it takes far more than images such as a son masturbating his father if they are not accompanied by the corresponding depth charge that Bellocchio was able to detonate sixty years ago.

https://youtu.be/p8xqt2qVJWs

Aïnouz and Filippou present an American family settled on the outskirts of Barcelona: a blind father (Tracy Letts), widower of a beautiful woman devoured by wolves—played by Pamela Anderson (the metaphor here is hardly imaginative); three immature and spoiled sons—the epileptic and easily manipulated Robert (Lukas Gage), the manipulative and brainless factotum Ed (Callum Turner), and the seemingly least bizarre of them all, Jack (Jamie Bell), whose girlfriend Martha (Elle Fanning) has just entered the family; and, completing the portrait, Anna (Riley Keough), a parasitic figure and cook who occupies the most domestic role of all. Apparently, Josh O’Connor and Kristen Stewart, first choices for Ed and Anna, were spared the disaster due to scheduling conflicts.

With the best of intentions, Ed devises a plan to free Jack from the family’s chains and to begin a new life himself, far from the imposing—in every sense—family villa. From that point on, once the family’s depravity has been laid out in a series of scenes that resemble an embarrassingly contrived catalogue, the plot of Rosebush Pruning leaves behind a sense of useless redundancy, aestheticized and wrapped in an agreeable musical score by Matthew Herbert (which includes “Paninaro” by Pet Shop Boys), for a melodrama of outdated perversity, photographed with the customary excellence of Hélène Louvart.