Lead
Rosebush Pruning, a high-profile new film that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, assembles a glamorous cast only to deliver a divisive, often frustrating experience. The story tracks a dysfunctional American family living in a grand Spanish house and foregrounds incest, violence and moral decay while leaning on glib, self-aware narration. Despite pedigree—writer Efthimis Filippou and director Karim Aïnouz, plus stars Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Elle Fanning and Pamela Anderson—the film failed to cohere for many viewers and critics. What was intended as transgressive cinema landed largely as a stylistic misfire.
Key Takeaways
- Premiere: The film debuted at the Berlin Film Festival, attracting significant attention because of its cast and pedigree.
- Cast: Principal actors include Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell, Elle Fanning, Pamela Anderson, Tracey Letts and Lukas Gage.
- Creative team: Written by Efthimis Filippou (frequent collaborator with Yorgos Lanthimos) and directed by Karim Aïnouz, whose recent work has divided critics.
- Source of inspiration: The picture cites Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 Fists in the Pocket as a touchstone, but critics note the influence is loose rather than reverent.
- Tone and content: The film stages explicit psychosexual transgressions—incest, murder and bodily excess—yet many viewers found its provocations inert rather than electrifying.
- Critical reaction: Early responses described the movie as visually confident in places but narratively scattershot; some called it alienating rather than transgressive.
Background
Fists in the Pocket (1965) stands as a landmark of Italian cinema: Marco Bellocchio’s debut married personal outrage at bourgeois hypocrisy to formal rigor drawn from neorealism and the French New Wave. That film’s rawness and clarity of intent set a high bar for any contemporary project that invokes it. Efthimis Filippou helped write several of Yorgos Lanthimos’s most provocative works—Dogtooth and The Lobster among them—films known for precise, uncanny worlds. Karim Aïnouz’s earlier films, including Madame Satan and The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, demonstrated his capacity for intimate, emotionally charged storytelling, though his recent projects have been judged uneven.
The new film relocates a wealthy, disordered American family to a grand Spanish residence where they have lived since a move from New York “six years ago,” according to the narrative. The household survives on an inheritance after the mother’s violent death by wolves, and the siblings orbit a blind, censorious patriarch. Those plot elements set up a claustrophobic environment meant to expose desire, repression and inherited privilege. Festival programmers and critics alike expected either a daring reimagining of Bellocchio’s themes or a fresh, modern provocation; the results proved more ambiguous.
Main Event
At its Berlin screening, Rosebush Pruning presented a succession of provocations—explicit scenes, contrived aphorisms and a breathless voiceover narration by the protagonist Edward (Callum Turner). The voiceover, which often frames the action with mawkish epigrams about families and desire, struck some viewers as tacked-on and explanatory rather than illuminating. The plot centers on tense sibling relationships: Jack (Jamie Bell) appears outwardly the most conventional, while the epileptic brother Robert (Lukas Gage) and the scheming sister Anna (Riley Keough) complicate his life through desire and rivalry.
Visually the film supplies moments of careful composition—Aïnouz’s eye for texture and space is evident—but those frames rarely coalesce into a consistent formal system that supports the script’s ambitions. Performances varied: a few actors found tonal register that landed, while others felt miscast or underexposed within the film’s erratic rhythm. Audience response in the screening ranged from polite disquiet to outright impatience; several critics praised technical craft even as they faulted emotional and intellectual coherence.
Comparisons to Filippou’s collaborations with Lanthimos were immediate and frequent. Where Lanthimos’s films create their own hermetic logic and moral code, this film attempts similar estrangement but often retreats into stylish aphorism and shock for shock’s sake. The result is a movie that signals transgression without consistently delivering the formal control or narrative depth that made its models compelling.
Analysis & Implications
The film raises questions about authorship and fit: Filippou’s darkly absurd sensibility has yielded masterpieces when aligned with a director who enforces a rigorous, deadpan logic; Aïnouz’s strengths lie in sensual, humanist realism and a looser register. Their pairing yields intermittent synergy but more frequently a tonal mismatch—an aesthetic tug-of-war that leaves the audience unsure how to respond. This mismatch suggests that high-caliber collaborators do not guarantee a successful fusion of style and substance.
For festival programmers and distributors, Rosebush Pruning poses a marketing dilemma. Its star names and provocative premise create visibility, but lukewarm early reviews could blunt commercial prospects and limit the film’s festival momentum. The project may find niche audiences who appreciate its eclectic excess, but mainstream arthouse traction seems uncertain unless word-of-mouth shifts markedly.
Culturally, the film’s reliance on shock and grotesque family dynamics highlights an ongoing festival trend: provocation as a default strategy to command attention in a crowded marketplace. When provocation is paired with disciplined formal invention, the effect can be revelatory; when it acts as stylistic window dressing, audiences tend to label the work indulgent. Rosebush Pruning currently reads closer to the latter, which will likely shape its critical afterlife.
Comparison & Data
| Feature | Fists in the Pocket (1965) | Rosebush Pruning (Berlin premiere) |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Italy – auteur debut | International production; American family set in Spain |
| Creative approach | Neorealist/French New Wave influence, austere and direct | Surreal aphorism blended with sensual mise-en-scène |
| Reception | Critical breakthrough; enduring classic | Divisive; praised for some craft, criticized for coherence |
The table underscores that influence does not equal replication: Bellocchio’s film achieved cultural force through formal clarity and social timing, while the new film struggles to find a logically consistent method to match its provocative aims. In festival contexts, clarity of method often determines whether outrageous content is perceived as meaningful or merely sensational.
Reactions & Quotes
“A star-studded stink bomb” — a succinct characterization used by at least one early critic to capture the film’s mismatch between gloss and impact.
Early critical response / festival coverage
Some viewers noted that Filippou’s absurdist tendencies recall the logic of Dogtooth and The Lobster, but that those works benefitted from a stricter directorial regimen than Rosebush Pruning provides.
Festival critics (summary)
Unconfirmed
- No verified reports confirm that the film’s premiere elicited formal protest or walkouts beyond scattered audience complaints—reports vary by screening.
- It is unconfirmed whether the filmmakers intended the voiceover to be a later addition or if that perception reflects post-screening interpretation rather than production fact.
Bottom Line
Rosebush Pruning arrives as an ambitious but uneven film: its roster of talent and provocative material promised a consequential festival moment, but the final work struggles to translate shock into meaning. The mismatch between Filippou’s mordant scripting impulses and Aïnouz’s looser, sensual direction creates intermittent brilliance shadowed by pervasive incoherence. For programmers, distributors and cinephiles, the film will be a case study in how creative pairing and formal discipline shape whether provocation reads as insight or mere excess.
Going forward, the film’s fate will hinge on whether it finds a receptive niche audience or whether critical ambivalence limits its distribution and cultural shelf life. As with many polarizing festival premieres, subsequent screenings, critical reassessment or the director’s next projects may reframe how Rosebush Pruning is remembered.