{"id":426600,"date":"2026-02-15T06:22:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/426600\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T06:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T06:22:11","slug":"callum-turner-in-a-sleek-silly-provocation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/426600\/","title":{"rendered":"Callum Turner in a Sleek, Silly Provocation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen the time came for Karim A\u00efnouz to direct his first English-language feature a few years ago, few would have bet on it being \u201cFirebrand.\u201d A historical drama based on the life of Henry VIII survivor Catherine Parr, it was handsome, well-acted and directed with complete proficiency by the Brazilian arthouse sensualist, but so far from his usual taste for saturated melodrama and eroticism, you\u2019d think he\u2019d been assigned the gig by lottery. After a brief trip home for the hyper-carnal thriller \u201cMotel Destino,\u201d A\u00efnouz returns to Europe with \u201cRosebush Pruning<\/a>,\u201d which on the face of it looks a snugger fit for his sensibilities: a sweating, absurdist family saga of outsize gestures and out-of-bounds desires, rendered in hues so hot and drenched, you half-expect a \u201cwet paint\u201d sign on the screen.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe more \u2014 and more outrageously \u2014 it unfolds, however, the less \u201cRosebush Pruning\u201d feels like it\u2019s in A\u00efnouz\u2019s wheelhouse. Or, indeed, anyone else\u2019s, given its alluring but thoroughly peculiar jumble of comic, dramatic and generally antic tones, or the increasingly indeterminate target of its hollow social satire. Even the film\u2019s creative DNA is all over the shop: Screenwriter Efthimis Filippou, a regular collaborator of Yorgos Lanthimos, was loosely inspired by Marco Bellocchio\u2019s 1965 debut feature \u201cFists in the Pocket,\u201d but where you can see that stark, startling anti-bourgeois fable playing out in the deadpan language of the Greek weird wave, A\u00efnouz\u2019s ripe maximalist touch makes for a different animal entirely, even before you factor in the high-low contrasts of its all-star cast.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll these clashing elements and impulses, not to mention some droolworthy design contributions, land the film somewhere in the region of a Europudding \u201cSaltburn\u201d \u2014 not an unenjoyable proposition, but not a substantial one, and likely to be every bit as divisive with audiences as that sounds. For leading man Callum Turner<\/a>, it\u2019s a commendably strange, kinky vehicle to drive directly into a storm of James Bond casting rumors. Not that \u201cRosebush Pruning\u201d turns out to be business as usual for any of his collaborators \u2014 including his gifted director, drifting ever farther from the warm romanticism of \u201cFuturo Beach\u201d or \u201cInvisible Life.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe odd, misleadingly prim title stems from a clumsy proverb made up by Edward (Turner), the neglected, semi-literate middle son of an exceedingly wealthy American family that relocated some years ago to the verdant northeastern coast of Spain. \u201cPeople are roses, families are rosebushes,\u201d he says in his surly running voiceover. \u201cRosebushes need pruning.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAs for who he thinks his family could shed, take your pick from its variously louche, dysfunctional fashion-plate members, headed by Tracy Letts\u2019 blind, unfiltered patriarch, usually clad in a scarlet satin bathrobe. Edward\u2019s younger brother Robert (Lukas Gage) spends his days doing little but pining most inappropriately for the attentions of eldest sibling Jack (Jamie Bell), while the stunted, oversexed energy of lone sister Anna (Riley Keough) spits in all directions.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen we\u2019re told that the children\u2019s mother (Pamela Anderson<\/a>, surprisingly cast in a small role that more obviously calls for Christine Baranski-style hauteur) died two years ago, we\u2019re inclined to think she\u2019s better off out of it \u2014 though perhaps less so on hearing that she was torn apart by wolves in the local Catalonian woods. There\u2019s an air of perverse adult fairytale to this setup, underlined by the lack of explanation as to why four adult siblings in their thirties haven\u2019t managed to break out of the modernist family palace: Extreme wealth, it seems, makes comfortably numb prisoners of those born into it. <\/p>\n

\n\tBut Jack, the most sensible and straitlaced of the lot, may finally be making his escape, thanks to the normalizing influence of his merely quite privileged girlfriend Martha (Elle Fanning<\/a>). As Jack and Martha look into finding a home of their own, the terse, stolidly watchful Edward \u2014 an oddly opaque character to carry the film\u2019s point of view, played with aloof melancholy by Turner \u2014 is tacitly envious, having recently made his own fleeting connection with a citizen of the real world. Anna and Robert, however, despair over the imminent disruption of the family unit, and drastic, escalatingly calamitous steps are taken toward maintaining the status quo. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe fallout brings nasty surprises and broken taboos aplenty, though Filippou\u2019s script actually shocks most effectively when dramatizing more everyday acts of cruelty and elitism. In the film\u2019s most effectively discomfiting scene, when Martha meets the family for a strained lunch, she is ruthlessly sized up and dressed down by Anna for the visible price gap between her self-bought Zara dress and her gifted Bottega handbag. (And that\u2019s before Dad, with calm entitlement, asks Anna to describe their guest\u2019s cleavage.) <\/p>\n

\n\tThat Martha emerges as the most sympathetic figure here is saying something, considering her own spoilt retort to Jack\u2019s hesitancy when they view a multimillion-dollar oceanside mansion: \u201cI refuse to keep begging for the simple things.\u201d \u201cRosebush Pruning\u201d makes its anti-capitalist points tartly enough in such moments, but the twistier things get, the sillier they get too \u2014 while any social commentary begins to feel like a thin cover for so much luridly gross, glossy spectacle. <\/p>\n

\n\tStill, there\u2019s pleasure in the film\u2019s excesses, mainly because A\u00efnouz and his team present them with such febrile, iridescent beauty. DP H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Louvart drowns frame after frame in sticky candy-apple reds, angelica greens and eye-searing ultramarines, the brightness turned way, way up \u2014 not that the rolling Spanish landscapes and Rodrigo Martirena\u2019s magazine-dream production design demand the extra help. There\u2019s nary a crease to be seen in Bina Daigeler\u2019s costumes, all covetable, unapproachable and tailored to the gods; Matthew Herbert\u2019s score may be among the lushest ever slathered over such horrible goings-on. Does it all need to be this lustrous? Does \u201cRosebush Pruning\u201d lose some perspective in all this dazzle? Perhaps. But if you\u2019re going to eat the rich, the film reasons, they may as well be delicious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the time came for Karim A\u00efnouz to direct his first English-language feature a few years ago, few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146588,7135,42599,96,156482,2839,7522,156483,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-426600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-berlin-film-festival","9":"tag-callum-turner","10":"tag-elle-fanning","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-karim-ainouz","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-pamela-anderson","15":"tag-rosebush-pruning","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}