Rosebush Pruning

A profoundly un-serious film for serious times, Rosebush Pruning is a caustically funny farce about a deliciously horrible family of ultra-rich American expats living in Spain. The second English-language feature by Berlin-based Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (Futuro Beach, Motel Destino, Firebrand) is shallow and lurid and not entirely coherent. Even so, it is loaded with enough visual brio, acrid wit and WTF plot twists to hit the target as a surreal, salacious guilty pleasure.

World premiering in the main Berlinale competition this weekend, Rosebush Pruning is likely to divide critics. It is already being touted as this year’s Saltburn (2023), a double-edged honour but a solid marketing angle. A richly flavoured ensemble cast that includes Elle Fanning, Callum Turner, Jamie Bell, Riley Keough, a resurgent Pamela Anderson and Pulitzer-winning actor-playwright Tracy Letts should also help this MUBI-backed production gain buzzy traction following its festival run.

In gestation since the pandemic, Rosebush Pruning is a loose remake of veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s semi-autobiographical debut feature Fist in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) (1965), which opened to very mixed reviews in Venice, but later earned high praise from Pasolini, and now enjoys cult classic status. This updated version is scripted by Greek author Efthimis Filippou, best known for his serial collaborations with director Yorgos Lanthimos, which makes sense. There are certainly clear echoes of dysfunctional family tragicomedies like Dogtooth (2009) and Alps (2011) here.

The main location is a sumptuous modernist villa in the hilly hinterlands of Catalonia, close to Barcelona. Following the death of their mother (Anderson) in a macabre wolf attack, four grown-up siblings live in pressure-cooker isolation in with their blind, demanding, abusive father (Letts). Trapped in a web of co-dependency, these wealthy wastrels do little besides obsess on fancy clothes and designer labels in the same way Patrick Bateman does in American Psycho. “We are all lazy, mediocre, vapid egotists,” says Ed (Turner), the film’s ostensible narrator, and it is hard to disagree.

Ed himself is an aimless playboy with an allergy for the written word and an unhealthy fascination with Donatella Versace. His acid-tongued sister Anna (Keogh) and epileptic younger brother Robert (Lukas Gage) are similarly damaged, self-absorbed, borderline sociopaths. All three share a quasi-incestuous love-hate fixation on Jack (Bell), the favourite son and sole sibling with a vaguely normal life outside the family. The casual sexual tension between all five family members has a strong homoerotic charge and a queasy, disturbing undertow. A scene combining toothpaste, masturbation and fellatio is especially creepy, but also horribly funny to those of us with a sick sense of humour.

When Jack threatens to leave the family home to purse his budding relationship with Martha (Fanning), a contemporary classical guitar player, the already strained sibling dynamic begins to crack. Ed, Anna and Robert hatch a series of crazed schemes to thwart Jack, from sexual seduction to murder, but they mostly misfire or backfire. The plot’s tenuous claim on logic evaporates entirely during this final crescendo of carnage and violence. In any case, it is difficult to care about horrible people doing awful things to each other. All the same, there are plenty of hilariously gruesome, epically pointless deaths to savour here.

In his Berlin press notes, Aïnouz pitches Rosebush Pruning as an absurdist critique of patriarchal power and oppressive family dynamics. A nice try, though not wholly convincing. But even if this overcooked satire ultimately adds up to less than the sum of its parts, at least the parts are mostly great. The performances are all pretty strong, with Keogh reliably magnetic even in a fairly slight role, while Anderson’s ongoing art-house reinvention is a joy to witness.

British left-field electronic composer Matthew Herbert’s pounding score also boosts the bilious melodrama levels effectively, alongside some well-placed soundtrack inclusions, notably the thunderously doomy vintage Pet Shop Boys track “Paninaro”. High-calibre visual elements, from cinematographer Hélène Louvart’s saturated Pop Art colour palette to meticulously designed typographic credits that might make Wes Anderson jealous, help add up to an intoxicating sensory experience overall.

Director: Karim Aïnouz
Screenwriter: Efthimis Filippou
Cast: Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Elle Fanning, Jamie Bell, Tracy Letts, Lukas Gage, Pamela Anderson, Elena Anaya
Cinematography: Hélène Louvart
Editing: Heike Parplies, David Jancso, Ilka Janka Nagy
Music: Matthew Herbert
Production designer: Rodrigo Martirena
Costumes: Bina Daigeler
Producers: Michael Weber, Viola Fügen, Simone Gattoni, Annamaria Morelli, Andreas Wentz, Vladimir Zemtsov
Production companies: The Match Factory (Germany), Kavac Film (Italy), The Apartment (Italy), Sur Film (Spain), Crybaby (UK), MUBI (UK)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In English
94 minutes