Rosebush Pruning
Black comedy gains an extra hue of red in a stilted work from the scripter Efthimis Filippou, regular collaborator of Yorgos Lanthimos.
All in the family: Lukas Gage, Callum Turner (behind) and Riley Keough
Image courtesy of Mubi.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Edward Taylor likens people to roses. “And families to rosebushes – and rosebushes need pruning.” He’s an unusual individual in that he’s never learned to read or write or even to drive. So he hitchhikes everywhere. His passion is making up proverbs, like “Banana falls down, it doesn’t matter. Melon falls down, it’s all over” – a real favourite of his. Having grown up in the bosom of a very rich family, alongside three equally entitled siblings, Ed has never really possessed a strong moral compass. Six years ago the family upped sticks from New York and moved to a luxury villa in Catalonia and all was fine and dandy until Ed’s mother (Pamela Anderson) was torn apart by a pack of wolves. Now Ed (Callum Turner), Robert (Lukas Gage), Jack (Jamie Bell) and Anna (Riley Keough) look after their father (Tracy Letts), a real estate tycoon who lost his sight under mysterious circumstances, with Anna adopting the woman’s role and doing most of the cooking and caring.
Every member of this privileged, dysfunctional clan – whose only interest seems to be fashion, music and real estate – seems to have a sexual peccadillo, with Jack, the eldest, serving as a sort of carnal centrifugal force. Then Jack gets a girlfriend, Martha (Elle Fanning), and the dynamics begin to shift. At first the siblings can’t take it seriously, until Jack invites Martha to dinner and their blind father asks them to describe her body to him, in particular her breasts. Things might never be the same again…
There are elements here of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth (2009) and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (2019) in the style and circumstances of this perverse, isolated world of advantaged family life. Employing a super-colour-saturated palette and a lazy, laid-back momentum, the film feels sleepily dangerous as we discover more and more about these crazy people. But that’s the problem – there is no momentum.
Rosebush Pruning is actually a loose remake of Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket (1965), with elements of the more recent How to Make a Killing. which itself was a remake of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). The problem here, though, is that once the shockwaves start to subside, the self-obsessed characters lose their interest and the film feels purely an exercise in how to shock for shock’s sake. Yes, much of it is shocking, as these characters live in a very private world of their own making (and morals), in a house that feels at loggerheads with itself with the furniture arranged at uncompromising angles.
For viewers with the blackest of souls, there may be an element of the appeal of the danse macabre, which is delivered with some skill by the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, Firebrand) working from Efthimis Filippou’s challenging screenplay (Filippou actually wrote Dogtooth). But as the film drags on, and the ridiculous becomes even more ridiculous, it’s hard to want to spend another minute with these self-serving, odious people.
Cast: Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Lukas Gage, Elena Anaya, Tracy Letts, Elle Fanning, Pamela Anderson, Yorgos Stefanakos.
Dir Karim Aïnouz, Pro Michael Weber, Viola Fügen, Simone Gattoni, Annamaria Morelli, Andreas Wentz and Vladimir Zemtsov, Screenplay Efthimis Filippou, Ph Hélène Louvart, Pro Des Rodrigo Martirena, Ed Heike Parplies, Dávid Jancsó and Ilka Janka Nagy, Music Matthew Herbert, Costumes Bina Daigeler, Sound Frank Kruse, Dialect coach Naomi Joy Todd.
The Apartment Pictures/The Match Factory/Sur-Film/In Bloom/Mubi/Fremantle/Kavac Film/Rai Cinema/Metafilms/Anna Films/Crybaby Films/BFI-Mubi.
94 mins. UK/Spain/Italy/Germany. 2026. UK Rel: 10 July 2026. US Rel: 24 July 2026. Cert. 18.
