So, uh, not to be that person, but who wrote this film?
Efthimis Filippou (Greek: Ευθύμης Φιλίππου, pronounced [efˈθimisfiˈlipu]; born 18 January 1977) [...] is best known for his collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, with whom he co-wrote the screenplays for Dogtooth (2009), Alps (2011), The Lobster (2015), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) and Kinds of Kindness (2024).
OH.
I try not to judge things by what they're not.
When word hit the street about Rosebush Pruning at Berlin, theories abounded about which culture war this specific incendiary piece was going to be battling on behalf of. Was this an eat the rich hitpiece, a Saltburn ripoff, a Succession send-up? Or was this just another shock value film trying to pull people to the cinema on word of mouth?
The thing about independent cinema in the 21st Century is we've gotten past the point of shock. Commentary disguised as shock-jockeying rarely lands and is often forgotten, at best becoming a punchline. There is no art to it anymore – aside from general desensitisation, it feels like the topics filmmakers of any note want to broach become thinner and thinner, and there's less and less to say.
On its own, Rosebush Pruning might have confused me. Its stunted dialogue, off-kilter plot structure and paper-thin characters might have made me genuinely angry, and made me want to profusely explain myself. However, I have reached Lanthimos Nirvana. I will not be ragebaited. Efthimis and Yorgos have a lot of crimes they need to answer for, but I am not the Court, and I am not the hand of justice; I am just a girl.
Somewhere around the moment a brother was comparing his girlfriend's tits to his sister's, I knew we were on a boat going nowhere.
There is a grand tradition of Kink in cinema – dare I say it is the oldest tradition. Film has always been the domain of the taboo, the cutting-edge medium young perverts flocked to. This is so well known to be the case – film as a medium causing such moral panic – that the Hayes Code was invented to try to put some clothes on the burgeoning medium. This did not work, and simply sublimated the urges into metaphor.
I have no problem with Kink in my cinema – even if I don't quite relate to all of it. I tend to think anyone of sound mind can sell me on pretty much anything within a 2hr span - I'm not hard to impress. I say this to say that I'm not about to start a moral panic. I'm not going to sit here and be the prototypical anti-sex Gen-Z "prude". Far from it. I have a review of Blue Film coming in September, and if you know anything about that film, no self-respecting puritan would think as highly of it as I do.
So when I say I find Filippou and Lanthimos' brand of perversion sinister, I am not coming at this with a Policeman's spirit. I don't mean sinister in the ways they clearly want it to be – oh, so wrong, so broken – but sinister in the meta way: Why do you keep coming back here? What has you so excited to keep coming back to isolated incest, over and over and over? Surely, surely, we have done this enough?
Rosebush Pruning might as well be an English-language rehashing of Dogtooth, which also centred on an isolated, semi-incestuous family wary of outsiders. It treads back over the same ground entirely. It has little else to say. 8 people on earth feel represented by this, and only around 3 are likely to have formed new thoughts and neural pathways, I fear. I believed absolutely nothing, which is crazy when you have a cast as stacked and focused as this one clearly was.
What are we doing here? Which market is this for? Not to be crude, but the young men who might have fawned over this have Pornhub, Anime and OnlyFans now! The men who will actually watch this will rip it apart for Pitch Deck references. Why do we keep coming back here? I don't think there's some grand cultural reason - at least in the spaces I frequent, this form of analysis of the upper class feels like a humblebrag disguised as a critique; a way of dirtily rounding the corners of an otherwise morally reprehensible set.
In my humble opinion, we don't have time for this.
But don't take my word for it – Rosebush Pruning hits streaming on the 21st August, only on Mubi.
