Words by JANE CROWTHER
Rich people are awful. F Scott Fitzgerald told us this. More recently Saltburn, Succession, How To Make A Killing… The wealthy family at the centre of Karim Aïnouz’s willfully quirky tale are, unsurprisingly, morally bankrupt and in the words of narrator, Edward (Callum Turner) ‘vapid egotists’. Edward is obsessed with luxury fashion labels, hitchhiking instead of driving and the idea of pruning a family like rosebushes. His need to downsize his relatives is driven by the hero worship of his brother Jack (Jamie Bell) who Ed determines should inherit the fortune of their blind, lascivious patriarch (Tracy Letts) with repugnant proclivities.
The other family members who could stand in the way are a bitchy sister Anna (Riley Keough), – who has assumed the role of Mother in the absence of their own – and a listless brother Robert (Lukas Gage) who periodically suffers epileptic fits. The siblings’ Mum (played by Pamela Anderson with dazzling white teeth) was eaten by wolves and they now have a naked statue of her in their luxe pad in Catalonia. How droll. While Edward, Anna and Robert are incapable of finding connection outside of their incestuous family (Edward falls for a schlubby Greek doctor he meets randomly, Anna imagines come-ons from the local butcher and Robert is openly in love with his elder brother), Jack has met a regular girl (Elle Fanning) and could find happiness in a ritzy coastal mansion with her…
As Edward conspires to reduce his familial head count via a series of signposted finales, the dynasty show their teeth – literally and figuratively. Jack’s girlfriend is humiliated at a ‘meet the fam’ dinner (an entertaining scene that works better than the rest of the film), Anna competes, schemes and wears designer clothes, Robert betrays. There’s unpleasantness with a horse, dental hygiene obsession and dick pics – as conjured by Yorgos Lanthimos’ regular writing partner Efthimis Filippou. But this very much feels like Lanthimos-lite. Though it’s gorgeous-looking and well acted with an arch detachment (Turner as lead is like Brett Easton Ellis’ persona from The Shards), Rosebush Pruning feels as ephemeral as the fashion on display and as trite as the proverb Ed likes to collect. It’s satire without particular bite.
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Images courtesy MUBI
Rosebush Pruning is in cinemas now
