Blood kinks, billionaires and Pamela Anderson: Rosebush Pruning will leave you breathless
Callum Turner, Elle Fanning and Riley Keogh lead an all-star cast in this blisteringly thrilling erotic eat the rich satire.
If you thought violent, hypersexual, upperclass dark family satires were over, I’m afraid you were dead wrong. Distributed by film distributor and streaming platform MUBI, Rosebush Pruning is director Karim Aïnouz (Motel Destino) and writer Efthimis Filippou’s (The Lobster, Kinds of Kindness) daring and provocative contribution to the eat-the-rich satires – Saltburn meets Triangle of Sadness, with all the double crossing and sibling-amory of Cruel Intentions – only much more blood.
Our miserably wealthy family’s narrator is sensitive middle brother Ed (Callum Turner), a would-be modern Aesop, coining phrases and proverbs from his rose garden, while refusing to read or write, interesting himself exclusively in music and fashion.
His blind father (Tracy Letts), a calmly cruel man, takes a literal sacrificial lamb to the woods every month to be left where his mother (Pamela Anderson) was torn apart by wolves. A whiny, talentless wannabe popstar of a sister, Anna (Riley Keough), an inappropriately lustful younger brother Robert (Lukas Gage) and a prodigal son, a tall handsome eldest brother and the object of their combined desires, Jake (Jamie Bell), complete the fractured and dysfunctional family.
They live together, mourning their mother, in a dark Lynchian mansion in Catalunya – it’s a hellish maze of plush furniture, dim lighting and eccentric art. Their meals are charged with contempt, and their evenings spent facing away from one another, smoking and listening to Chicks on Speed as if they’re having fun. They retire to masturbate alone thinking of eggplants and designer shoes and each other.
The only remotely sane character is Martha (Elle Fanning), a classical guitarist and Jack's girlfriend who spends her time around the family visibly baffled by their casual cruelty and exaggerated detachment from reality.
This skewering portrait of American wealth comes at the ongoing peak of eat-the-rich sentiment in cinema, guillotine memes and billionaire bashing. Their abusive, manipulative, incestuous home; their hollow obsessions with fashion and pop music; their meaningless phrases and flashy cars; this is the familiar setting for the callousness of wealth. I hear echoes of Charli XCX’s ‘SS26’: “Nothing’s going to save us, not music, fashion or film”. These characters are utterly unsaveable.
Fashion is a prominent feature in the film at various points – Jack’s Gucci or Bottega Soprano’s style tracksuits; a firearm purchase inspired by the death of Giovanni Versace; Anna’s bright blue gogo boots (even while mourning); Demeulemeister, Versace, Balenciaga, Bottega, allname dropped at least once. It’s often their guiding force and, in the absence of any real morals, leads them to severe and superficial ends.
“You couldn’t imagine how badly she dresses, dad!” Anna shrieks to her father in a painful pitch about her would-be sister in law. “Probably from COS or Zara” she sneers about Martha’s dress during a particularly savage deconstruction of Martha’s clothes and body (for the twisted benefit of her blind father) over lunch. Their vile judgemental moments are also where the dark comedy of the movie creeps in, in their obliviousness, their out-of-touch-ness, the sheer farce of living like for next Spring/Summer.
Where Rosebush Pruning leaves other outrageous wealth satires behind is its willingness to take taboos, like Saltburn’s period sex scene, a step further. Rosebush Pruning goes full blood kink – throw in some incest, a dash of attempted fratricide and bake at mass murder plot for 94 minutes and you have one frighteningly wild ride of a film.
All of this hinges on a tense and exhilarating score from Mathew Herbert (A Fantastic Woman). While manipulation and plots brood, the score stays slow, considered and suspenseful. At its arguably spotlight moment, while wolves maul a bloodied carcass, Herbert’s compositions are twisting, dark and angular. Throughout, Herbert elevates the tension and drama of the film to dizzying, disorienting heights. Strings meet breakbeats, it‘s warping electronica and Spanish classical guitar in equal parts. With the addition of some Pet Shop Boys and Gesaffelstein, Rosebush Pruning’s soundtrack is a cult classic in the making.
This depraved erotic thrill ride of a film is not for the faint of heart, it will leave you breathless, jaw dropped and very thankful for your in-laws.
MUBI releases Rosebush Pruning in UK cinemas from July 10th. Book tickets to a preview with director Karim Aïnouz at The Castle Cinema on July 9 here.
