Rosebush Pruning’s cocktail of beauty and barbarism intentionally delights in toying with the audience, in a film uninterested in dissecting class constructs, but rather in wealth as a disguise for immorality, abuse, and manipulation.
There’s a famous saying: you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. For many of us, our families are supportive, loving and kind; however, for others, family can be toxic and full of dysfunction, abuse, and distress. These toxic family structures can weigh an individual down, leading to anxiety and a need to escape. They are families where pruning is essential if an individual is to truly live. The importance of pruning sits at the heart of Karim Aïnouz’s divisive, perverse and dark tale of a wealthy New York family now living in Spain; a family where money, fashion, secrecy and lies thread through every discussion, interaction and encounter, creating a toxic and deadly cocktail of rampant capitalism, deceit, abuse, manipulation and patriarchal control.
Loosely based on Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 feature, Fists in the Pocket, Aïnouz’s film is free of any of the usual rules associated with cinematic storytelling. It’s a beautifully shot and performed enigma of dark comedy, satire, and anti-bourgeois storytelling that will divide audiences and critics alike. In fact, it’s the kind of film where you could take a row of four people, and each person’s thoughts on this intriguing, seductive, wince-inducing, and obscure tale of a toxic family eating itself would likely be different.
Of course, it’s not the first time Aïnouz has explored the dysfunctional life of a wealthy and powerful family. His first English-language picture, Firebrand, explored one of the deadliest and most dysfunctional families in history: the Tudors. In Rosebush Pruning, we find ourselves not in the company of royalty but an uber-rich family where fashion and image disguise the rotting roots of family life. It’s a family led by a blind, controlling, horse-riding patriarch who has a sexual obsession with toothpaste (Tracy Letts). His wife (Pamela Anderson) apparently died years before, eaten by wolves in the forest (although that may not quite be the truth), and together, they had four children.
Jack (Jamie Bell) is the eldest and the most sane of these, and that’s saying something! He is also the obsession of his younger siblings, who all fawn over him and desire him on different levels. Edward (Callum Turner), our narrator of sorts and guide, is the middle, fashion-obsessed, semi-illiterate, pansexual member of the family: a man who keeps his cards close to his chest, and knows the family is about to eat itself. Then there is the lone sister Anna (Riley Keough), who desires Jack, ‘cares’ or is that services the needs of their father and manipulates the youngest boy Robert (Lukas Gage), who also desires Jack and spends his days doing absolutely nothing but fawning over his older brother.
Jack is the only sibling to have entered into a relationship with someone outside of the family, Martha (Elle Fanning). It’s a relationship Anna and Robert are not willing to accept, and one Edward is envious of, having also found a Greek doctor he liked, before letting him slip through his fingers. As Jack becomes closer to Martha and considers moving out of the family home, the web of secrets, lies, abuse and manipulation at the heart of this toxic family becomes clear, leading to an unavoidable pruning of the family tree, but who will survive? And who will find their stalk clipped?
As our journey alongside this disturbed family unfurls, there are more than a few surprises as cinematic taboos fall like the leaves of a rose in late Autumn. Writer Efthimis Filippou delights in challenging the audience, while Hélène Louvart brings her unmistakable brilliance to the visual prowess of Rosebush Pruning, with cinematography as sumptuous as the pages of a glossy high-end fashion magazine. Add a stunning dreamlike score by Matthew Herbert and the exceptional performances of a divine ensemble cast, and the beauty of Rosebush Pruning is unmistakable. Yet like the youthful beauty of Dorian Grey, it’s a facade that hides a grubby, lurid truth.
The cocktail of beauty and barbarism intentionally delights in toying with the audience, and as a result, many will draw parallels with Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn. Yet, while there are similarities in the grotesque privilege on display, Rosebush Pruning is not interested in dissecting class constructs. Instead, this is a film about wealth as a disguise for immorality, abuse and manipulation. Rosebush Pruning never fully leans into being either a dark comedy, drama, thriller or satire, and as a result, it has, and will continue to, divide critics and audiences. There is no hero, heroine, or indeed any likeable characters. Instead, Rosebush Pruning is content to delight in exploring the writhing bed of maggots behind a facade of wealth and beauty.
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