Rosebush Pruning (2026)

Good Bones, Wrong Secateurs - Rosebush Pruning review by griggs

Call it chaos with a trust fund. Karim Aïnouz plants a rich, feral American family on a Spanish hillside in Rosebush Pruning, lets the sun do its worst, and mostly just watches them wilt in real time. For a while, it’s brilliant.

Tracy Letts struts around in a scarlet bathrobe like a blind, foul-mouthed Lear who’s given up on subtlety, and honestly, I’d watch a whole film of just him. Elle Fanning turns up as the outsider everyone loves to needle, Callum Turner broods beautifully, and Jamie Bell and Riley Keough throw themselves at the mess with gusto. One dinner scene goes fully feral — knives out, masks off — and it’s the best ten minutes in the film by a mile.

I haven’t laughed this hard at a film all year, and I’m still not entirely sure how much of it was on purpose. Half the time I was laughing with it; the other half, at it — though I suspect that says as much about the film’s confusion as it does about its wit.

Then it backs off. Every time it looks ready to go full Greek tragedy, it remembers its manners and tidies itself up again. Frustrating, because the mess is clearly more fun than the tidying.

Good bones. Wrong secateurs.