Luca Guadagnino’s latest cinematic release, “Bones and All,” is a grisly return to the horror genre for the director, whose last hair-raising feature was 2018’s “Suspiria.” But in order to bring the film’s sickening cannibal scenes to life, Guadagnino heavily relied upon the talents of his long-time make-up department head and close friend Fernanda Perez.
“I always brought baby bottles of some mouth blood,” Perez told VarietyThis video explains how fake blood was used for each scene. “It was ridiculous because I was always following the actors with this baby bottle. But for Mrs. Harmon’s scene and for the end of the movie, we used a mix of syrups and brownies [for fake blood].”
Perez claims she consumed well over 10 liters fake blood in production.
But an unforeseen complication soon arose when the syrupy mixture would crust onto the actors’ skin after prolonged contact. Perez used a hot water bottle to squirt the actors and activate the liquid.
“At the end, the acting I think was more the suffering because of all this blood they had stuck in their bodies,” Perez joked.
The bloody feature is a dark romance between teenage antiheroes Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) who have the compulsion to eat people. Based on Camille DeAngelis’ 2015 novel, the film ultimately tells a love story. Maren’s father abandons her and she is left to fend for herself. Lee, along with other cannibals, join her on an almost never ending road trip that will allow her to forget her past.
Perez described “Bones and All” as her most challenging project to date, largely in part to Guadagnino’s painstaking specificity.
“Luca is very specific, and in my opinion, one of the great qualities is that he has this capacity to put the viewer in a really immersive experience,” Perez continued. “After a while, you are not only watching and listening to the movie, but you start to feel it, to smell it, and you begin to relish it.”
Perez conducted extensive research to ensure the aesthetics of each character aligned with the road-trip film’s setting, which takes place across Maryland, Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio during the late 1980s. Perez used photos from the same time as the film to get inspiration for his looks.
“I think the biggest resemblance is André Holland, Maren’s father. We made him look exactly like the photograph of a family we found,” Perez said.
Perez explained that Perez was responsible for determining the appearances of each character in addition to the careful pre-production. “eaters” — as the cannibals are called in the film — from the humans was especially daunting. Guadagnino emphasized that the cannibals should appear normal at first glance — meaning Perez would have to get down and dirty to differentiate predator from prey.
Perez utilized subtle details to achieve this distinction: spraying blood underneath the fingernails of the eaters, leaving other small drops of forgotten blood on the body and creating scars that allude to these characters’ violent pasts. Perez revealed the hidden story of Sully (Mark Rylance), Brad and Jake, who were fellow cannibals.
“Timothée had six scars on his body [that were applied] daily. With Brad, we decided to give him a bite on his hand,” Perez said. “You don’t see it, but it’s there. [As a backstory, we decided that] maybe when he met Jake, he had tried to bite him…” She goes on: “Sully has a big scar from his cheek that finishes at the end of his ear. We asked, ‘What is this? Maybe it’s a fight with another eater?’ He has [another] scar that we decided was going to be there because he was trying to eat something and a bone cut his chin.”
Jason Hamer was the creative director and owner of Hamer FX. Perez worked with him on many of the images of bodily disfigurement. Detailed conversations with a pathologist gave the two an understanding of what it takes to actually consume another human being — knowledge they were then able to translate into a more visceral, lifelike depiction of cannibalism throughout the movie.
“It’s not easy to eat someone, because before you get to the meat of the muscles — which is the soft part — you have to break through a lot of fat, and it depends where you eat that, maybe you’re going to find some organs,” Perez said. “Luca wanted to have the residue of all this stuff.”
Guadagnino was first encountered by Perez in 1996, during production of his short film. “Qui,” They were instantly connected. Ever since, Perez has collaborated with Guadagnino, including 2017’s “Call Me by Your Name” The 2020 Drama Series “We Are Who We Are.” They have shared family vacations.
“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.”
Production for the 2023 movie, which Perez and Guadagnino just finished, has also been completed by Perez und Guadagnino “Challengers,” Zendaya stars in a movie about tennis. The film’s genre is completely different from the previous one. “Bones and All,” Perez assures fans that just as much research was required in order to infuse the feature with Guadagnino’s signature realism.