Critics reviews

Taking a bite out of our obscenely capitalist era, Greek weird wave screenwriter Efthimis Filippou’s script (a loose spin on Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket) isn’t quite as sharp as you’d like, but still remains ferocious fun... Rosebush Pruning is a fabulous feast for the eyes and ears – and those who like their cinema deliriously queer.

His film has more than its share of bizarre and arresting moments – Riley Keough pleasuring herself with an aubergine; Callum Turner using toothpaste in a very novel way – but this warped satire is ultimately neither as shocking nor as funny as you initially hope it’s going to be.

This is a movie with a certain amount of visual style and it does hang together, but it tries the patience with its assumption that there is something rather seductive, amusing and entertaining about all these people. In fact, the satire is pedantic and overworked, and its dramatic effects are unearned, generating a strange sensation of pointlessness.

Wearying and amusing in equal measure, “Rosebush Pruning” is a visceral, often entertaining social satire without purpose. There’s little direction to speak of beyond pushing us ever closer to the edge. You could argue there’s certainly a demand for this, a need, even, to dismantle privilege in the end days that this world finds itself in. And when the film does dare to venture beyond shock value, the potential is staggering.

It would appear the only alignment director and screenwriter agree upon is vehement contempt for their subjects, but neither found a way to simultaneously humanize any of the characters enough to make the film something more than a beautiful void constantly riddled with dialogue as elegant as buck shot.

Rosebush Pruning is a film that’s deeply entertaining but feels like it’s constantly tripping over itself with its attempts to be subversive and shocking without giving any of the narrative effort needed to actually achieve this.

Aïnouz creates another visually captivating picture with eye-popping colours and a meticulous mise-en-scène... Composer Matthew Herbert’s bombastic score is super-loud in the mix, fitting the outlandish vibe as much as the garish production design by Rodrigo Martirena. This additionally makes the film more distanced from the viewer than Bellocchio’s quieter original (especially if seen today), but even such ramped-up artificiality and absurdity are much less transgressive in 2026 – an inevitable ceiling that such experienced filmmakers as Aïnouz and Filippou must have known they would hit.

Still, there’s pleasure in the film’s excesses, mainly because Aïnouz and his team present them with such febrile, iridescent beauty... Does it all need to be this lustrous? Does “Rosebush Pruning” lose some perspective in all this dazzle? Perhaps. But if you’re going to eat the rich, the film reasons, they may as well be delicious.

This spiky black comedy is smart, cool and occasionally funny, in a bleakly cynical way, but it’s also surprisingly dull for long periods. It is, however, clever in its marketable, post-modern pairing of a hot, high-profile cast with flashy production values and desirable-for-some lifestyle markers.

A profoundly un-serious film for serious times, Rosebush Pruning is a caustically funny farce about a deliciously horrible family of ultra-rich American expats living in Spain.

The peculiar energy, creepy sexual vibes and deliberate acid reflux of Aїnouz’s movie will make it an acquired taste... There’s no shortage of stylish craft here and much to enjoy in the performances, but ultimately, Rosebush Pruning is too glib to work, leaving only an acrid aftertaste.

It is loud and brashy and out there, but never quite provocative, a polished eat-the-rich manifesto that, produced at such a pivotal moment of capitalist-fuelled sociopolitical collapse, ends up feeling dated in its regurgitation of commonplace discourse packaged for the BlueSky age.