Rosebush Pruning review: Juicy concept let down by poor execution
I love an ‘eat the rich’ movie and watching awful, wealthy people destroying each other so Rosebush Pruning felt right up my alley. The ingredients were there – top concept, messed up characters – but it just wasn’t done well.
The movie, directed by Fireband‘s Karim Anouz, tells the story of an American family who has been living in Spain for the past six years. Their father (Tracy Letts) is blind and their mother (Pamela Anderson) died in horrific circumstances, and now all the kids are super rich and don’t need to work so they are mostly lazy and bored egotists. They all revere the eldest son Jack (Jamie Bell) in a weird, off-putting way and his siblings Anna (Riley Keough) and Robert (Lukas Gage) are in love with him. Jack is planning to leave the family home and make a new life with his girlfriend Martha (Elle Fanning), while his brother Edward (Callum Turner), who seems relatively normal too, believes the family needs to be pruned like a rosebush.
This satire, based on the 1965 movie Fists in the Pocket, was written by Greek writer Efthimis Filippou, who is best known for his collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos, such as Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. If you’ve seen any of these works, particularly Dogtooth, you’ll know what kind of film you’re getting with Rosebush Pruning. In fact, it feels like a movie written for Lanthimos; perhaps he passed and so Anouz took it on. I couldn’t help but think that Lanthimos would have done a better job with the material.
I know you don’t always have to like characters to enjoy a movie but this is one perverse, effed up family, so I really didn’t care for them (except maybe Jack and Martha). They don’t feel like real people; more shallow outlines of weird, inappropriate characters. The behaviours of the father, Anna and Robert don’t ring true and feel like they’re shocking for shock value’s sake, particularly one scene that no viewer will be able to unsee.
The pacing feels so off. It takes its sweet time introducing us to the family and their incestuous dynamics and then when we get into the ‘pruning’ section, everything happens so quickly. After the initial sequence, which is actually quite ridiculous, darkly hilarious and satisfying, the rest are rushed through and Anouz doesn’t give them enough drama or sense of occasion. When the movie ended, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, was that it?’ After watching these awful people, I needed more to get a full catharsis from their demise.
There are some redeeming qualities, for example, the Spanish setting is gorgeous, Anderson steals every scene she’s in, and you care somewhat for Bell and Fanning’s characters thanks to their realistic, grounded performances.
Rosebush Pruning is sadly not the twisted ‘eat the rich’ satire I was hoping for. What a shame.
In cinemas from Friday 10th July