Film review: Body & Bones' coming-of-age story feels painfully honest
Set against small-town Newfoundland, Melanie Oates’s debut feature marks a promising new female voice in Canadian film
Body & Bones is available to stream October 16 on iTunes Canada, on-demand
COMING OF AGE is a messy, awkward affair—sometimes mortifyingly so.
Director Melanie Oates doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable realities in her feature debut, a brutally honest and moodily shot look at sexual awakening that gets under your skin.
She sets it all against the cabin-partying, ATV-driving, rabbit-hunting world of small-town Newfoundland. Oates has reportedly based a lot of Body & Bones on her own experiences as a teen feeling trapped and smothered in the same remote Maritime milieu, and it shows in authentic details—right down to the historic, windswept houses with the chipped paint and worn linoleum floors where these coastal residents live.
It also shows in the ennui that’s afflicting 18-year-old Tess (played in a beautifully unaffected performance by Kelly Van der Burg). You have to have lived it to understand that weird paralysis—a mix of not knowing who you are or what you want with being pretty sure you hate everyone and everything in your immediate circle. Tess’s situation is made worse by the fact her mother has recently died, leaving her to live with her mom’s boyfriend Jerry, who’s already moved on to a new relationship.
Into this situation saunters Danny Sharpe (Joel Thomas Hynes), a legendary bad boy who’s moved on to the big smoke in St. John’s. He’s got neck and finger tattoos, every wrinkle and grey hair on his bedhead speaking to too many years of rock ‘n’ roll living. A bar owner, he’s returned to this corner of the Rock for a quick visit with his mother—Jerry’s new girlfriend. He’s got at least 15 or 20 years on Tess, but she’s drawn to him as a way out of her stifling world.
To her credit, Oates ably navigates some difficult terrain in this #MeToo era, specifically issues of consent and age differences. The sexual encounters are never gratuitous, but treated with the same, blunt eye as the rest of the story. We can understand why Tess is attracted to Danny, but we can also see that he’s kind of a fuckup —and that leads to another kind of awakening for Tess once she follows him to the city.
For his part, Hynes, an accomplished musician and writer who’s done his own share of living, feels made for the part. He only intimates the reasons Danny takes Tess past a sisterly bond—part mistake, part booze, part search for his own younger self.
Oates surrounds it all in dreamlike Newfoundland landscapes, from rocky outcrops to rustling trees and lapping waves. In the end, the natural world may be the only place where Tess truly feels at home.
Body & Bones is not always comfortable to watch, and it's often more about what's being thought and felt than what's being said or acted upon. But its depiction of the insecurity and indecision of growing up feels painfully accurate, and marks a promising start for an emerging female voice in Canadian film.
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