{"id":468882,"date":"2026-02-14T21:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T21:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468882\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T21:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T21:07:07","slug":"karim-ainouzs-black-comedy-is-a-bad-taste-riot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468882\/","title":{"rendered":"Karim A\u00efnouz\u2019s Black Comedy Is A Bad-Taste Riot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cPassion, love, sex, money\u2026\u201d The Pet Shop Boys\u2019 1986 hit \u201cPaninaro\u201d acts as an unofficial manifesto for Rosebush Pruning, an outrageous pansexual pantomime so out-there that \u201cWhat the actual f*ck?\u201d doesn\u2019t even begin to cover it. Co-scripted by Efthimis Filippou \u2014 a pioneer of the Greek \u201cWeird Wave\u201d with his regular collaborator Yorgos Lanthimos \u2014 Karim A\u00efnouz<\/a>\u2019s latest plays like a sleazy Eurotrash companion piece to Dogtooth, a story so polymorphous in its perversity that words like \u201cgay\u201d and \u201cstraight\u201d are meaningless, even as a starting point. Early Almod\u00f3var is an easy, visual comparison, but there\u2019s a joyful meanness at play here that\u2019s never been part of the Spanish master\u2019s vernacular; throw in a hefty dash of Joe Orton, however, and you\u2019ll be starting to get there.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt begins on a beach in Spain, where Edward (Callum Turner<\/a>) is schooling George, a new-found friend of just ten days\u2019 standing, in the ways of high fashion. George, on holiday from Athens, is middle-aged and hopelessly uncool, but Edward likes him anyway. \u201cHe\u2019s the kind of guy I\u2019d like to see naked,\u201d he says in the film\u2019s framing voiceover, out of the blue \u2014 and if that sounds a bit forward, buckle up. From this very moment, everything and anything is so instantly sexualized that things can only escalate, and they do, with an impressive degree of commitment to the pursuit of transgression in all its myriad forms. That it does so is largely thanks to its phenomenal cast of Gen Z-ers and Millennials whose fearless performances belie the supposed prudishness of their peers.<\/p>\n

\n\tGuided by Edward, we meet the rest of his family, who were moved from New York to Catalonia by their mother (Pamela Anderson<\/a>) six months prior. Their mother is dead, we learn, having been torn apart by wolves(!), leaving her blind husband (Tracy Letts<\/a>) alone with their son Edward, his brothers Jack (Jamie Bell<\/a>) and Robert (Lukas Gage<\/a>) and their sister Anna (Riley Keough<\/a>). All of them are in love with Jack, in the most incestuous ways imaginable, so when Jack brings home a new girlfriend, Martha (Elle Fanning<\/a>), it does not go well.<\/p>\n

\n\tEdward advertises his shallowness from the outset (\u201cI don\u2019t write, I don\u2019t read\u201d), and his family are cut from the same cloth \u2014 he calls them \u201clazy\u201d and \u201csuperficial\u201d is almost reverential tones \u2014 interested only in music and fashion. The latter is an understatement; each change of costume is a subplot in itself, from Robert\u2019s new socks to Anna\u2019s baby-blue go-go boots, which deserve a whole movie of their own. They are horrified, then, when Martha appears, a classically trained amateur guitarist who wears dresses from Zara and sports a non-functioning Swatch. \u201cYou can only imagine how badly she dresses, Dad!\u201d Anna wails, determined to separate the pair at any cost and not lacking in support from the others.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn any other movie, Anna would be the main event, and Keough rises to the challenge with the most lascivious performance since Selma Blair as N-cup stripper Ursula Udders in John Waters\u2019 A Dirty Shame. Everybody else, however, has read the same memo, and the film gradually reveals itself as an insane ensemble piece, with each character getting their moment in the sun, whether it\u2019s Dad and his rinse-your-eyes-with-bleach toothbrushing ritual or Robert and\u2026 Have I got this wrong, or does he try to carve a vagina in his upper thigh with a knife? (No, no, please don\u2019t tell me). Through all of this, keep your eye on Elle Fanning\u2019s horrified face as the whole freak scene unfolds in front of her eyes.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs there a plot? Well, there was in Marco Bellocchio\u2019s 1965 film Fists in the Pocket, which inspired Rosebush Pruning, but A\u00efnouz and Filippou don\u2019t really lean into that. Instead, the story focuses mostly on Jack and his attempts to leave his almost literally vampiric family by any means necessary, even though he is by no means any more normal than the others, given his fascination for blood, animal or menstrual. If you\u2019re still reading after all that, this insane black comedy might well be worth your while, a bad-taste riot that surpasses A\u00efnouz\u2019s last film Motel Destino (2024) in all its candy-colored decadence. These satanic majesties request the pleasure of your company. Dare you accept?<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: Rosebush Pruning
Festival: Berlin (Competition)
Director: Karim A\u00efnouz
Screenwriters: Karim A\u00efnouz and Efthimis Filippou, inspired by Marco Bellochio\u2019s 1965 film Fists In The Pocket
Cast: Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Lukas Gage, Elena Anaya with Tracy Letts and Elle Fanning and Pamela Anderson
Distributor: Mubi
Running time: 1 hr 35 mins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPassion, love, sex, money\u2026\u201d The Pet Shop Boys\u2019 1986 hit \u201cPaninaro\u201d acts as an unofficial manifesto for Rosebush…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[191249,36152,25102,88,217923,217924,49364,206,35217,899,56842,217925,138464],"class_list":{"0":"post-468882","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-jamie-bell","13":"tag-karim-au00efnouz","14":"tag-lukas-gage","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-pamela-anderson","17":"tag-review","18":"tag-riley-keough","19":"tag-rosebrush-pruning","20":"tag-tracy-letts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}