Luca Guadagnino’s latest cinematic release, “Bones and All,” is a harrowing return to the horror genre for the director, whose last impressive blockbuster was 2018’s Suspiria. But in order to bring the film’s cannibal scenes to life, Guadagnino relied heavily on The talents of the head of make-up department and his longtime close friend Fernanda Perez.
“I always brought baby bottles with some mouth blood,” Perez said. diverse‘, describing how fake blood was used in each scene. “It was silly because I always followed the actors with that baby bottle. But for the Ms. Harmon scene and at the end of the movie, we used a mixture of juice and cake.” [for fake blood]. ”
Perez estimates that she passed more than 10 liters of fake blood during production.
But an unexpected complication soon arises when the syrup mixture peels off the actors’ skin after prolonged contact. To reactivate the fluid, Perez would perform rounds in a hot water bottle position, and stream the cast.
“In the end, I think the acting was the most suffering because of all this blood that was stuck in their bodies,” Perez joked.
The bloody feature is a dark love story between teenage protagonists Marine (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothy Chalamet) who have a desire to eat people. The movie is based on the 2015 novel of the same title by Camille DeAngelis and is ultimately a love story. When Marin is abandoned by her father, she encounters Lee and the other cannibals on a seemingly endless wild ride to escape her past.
Perez has described “Bones and All” as her most challenging project yet, in part because of Guadagnino’s painstaking exclusivity.
“Luca is very specific, and in my opinion, one of his great qualities is that he has this ability to put the viewer into a really immersive experience,” Perez continued. “After a while, you don’t just watch and listen to the movie, you start to feel it, to smell it, to start enjoying it.”
Perez did extensive research to ensure that each character’s aesthetic was in keeping with the setting of the road trip movie, which takes place throughout Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia, and Ohio during the late 1980s. Using photos of people from that time period in the corresponding states, Perez was able to draw inspiration from real people when auditioning for the full cast.
“I think the biggest similarity is Andre Holland, Marin’s father. We made him look exactly like a family picture we found,” Perez said.
Besides the meticulous pre-production process, Perez said the task of distinguishing the appearance of “cannibals”—as cannibals are called in the film—from humans was particularly daunting. Guadagnino asserted that a cannibal must appear normal at first glance—meaning Perez must get down and dirty to distinguish between predator and prey.
Perez used meticulous detail to achieve this distinction: splattering blood under the eaters’ fingernails, leaving other small drops of forgotten blood on the body and creating scars that allude to these characters’ violent pasts. Perez revealed that in the case of fellow cannibals like Sully (Mark Rylance), Brad (David Gordon Green) and Jake (Michael Stullbarg), carefully chosen physical features are connected to a broader, untold story.
Timothy had six scars on his body [that were applied] daily. “With Brad, we decided to give him a bite on the hand,” Perez said. “You don’t see it, but it’s there. [As a backstory, we decided that] Maybe when he met Jake, he tried to bite him…” She continues, “Sulli has a big scar from his cheek that ends at the end of his ear. We asked: what is this? Maybe it’s a fight with another eater? He has [another] A scar that we decided would be there because he was trying to eat something and one of his chin bones was cut off.”
Jason Hammer, owner and creative director of Hamer FX, created the prosthetics for the film, and worked closely with Perez on the copious shots of physical disfigurement. Detailed conversations with a pathologist gave the two an understanding of what it takes to consume another human being — knowledge that they were then able to translate into a more in-depth and vivid depiction of cannibalism throughout the film.
“It’s not easy to eat someone, because before you get to the muscle meat — which is the soft part — you have to break down a lot of the fat, and depending on where you eat it, you’ll probably find leftovers of all that stuff,” Perez said. .”
Pérez first met Guadagnino in 1996 during the production of his first short film, “Qui” and the connection between them was instant. Since then, Perez has collaborated with Guadagnino, including 2017’s “Call Me by Your Name” and the 2020 drama series “We Are Who We Are”. The two have enjoyed family vacations together.
“Every movie I do with Luca is a joy, because he’s my best friend,” Perez said. “Every movie is a memory of our friendship.”
Perez and Guadagnino just wrapped production on the upcoming 2023 movie “The Challengers,” a movie about a tennis competition set to star Zendaya. And while the upcoming film is a complete shift in the genre from “Bones and All,” Perez assures fans that a lot of research was required to bring Guadagnino’s signature look to life.
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