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They have millions of dollars, a gorgeous villa in Spain, and a family dynamic so twisted it will make your jaw drop.

Welcome back to [Your Channel Name]! Today, we are recapping and breaking down the wild, beautiful, and deeply dark 2026 satirical thriller, "Rosebush Pruning" (directed by Karim Aïnouz and written by Dogtooth scribe Efthimis Filippou).

The story follows the incredibly wealthy but deeply codependent Taylor siblings—Jack (Jamie Bell), Ed (Callum Turner), Anna (Riley Keough), and Robert (Lukas Gage)—who live in isolation on a luxury estate in Catalonia under the shadow of their demanding father and the bizarre legacy of their mother (Pamela Anderson), who was supposedly eaten by wolves.

When the eldest brother, Jack, announces he’s moving out with his new classical guitarist girlfriend, Martha (Elle Fanning), the family's fragile, incestuous bubble bursts. What follows is a descent into jealousy, murder plots, and absolute chaos as the siblings do whatever it takes to keep their messed-up family unit together.

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Transcript
00:00You know, usually when we talk about how a movie begins, we expect some kind of gentle scene setting.
00:07Right, yeah, a little ramp up.
00:08Exactly, like a sweeping landscape, maybe a character waking up, just, you know, a little atmospheric music to ease you
00:14into the world.
00:14You get settled in.
00:15Yeah, that's the standard formula.
00:17But imagine sitting in the theater for this one.
00:20You're sitting there, the lights go down, the screen comes up.
00:23And before the story even really begins, a wealthy American matriarch is just ripped apart by wolves.
00:33Ripped apart in Catalonia.
00:35In Catalonia.
00:35And played by Pamela Anderson, no less.
00:38Oh, it is a profoundly jarring way to start anything.
00:41I mean, there is no ramp up at all.
00:43None.
00:43There's no musical cue to tell you how to feel.
00:45You just drop right into the brutal aftermath.
00:48Yeah.
00:49The matriarch is simply gone violently and immediately.
00:52And, well, she delivers that brief, visceral presence with absolute appropriate excess.
00:58It's wild.
00:59It really is.
00:59It's a statement of intent from the filmmakers.
01:01They're basically saying, you know, forget whatever safety you thought you had in this theater.
01:05Okay, let's unpack this.
01:07Because somehow, Pamela Anderson getting eaten by wolves is, like, not even the strangest part of this movie.
01:13Not even close, yeah.
01:14What we're left with in the wake of that cold open is just madness.
01:19We have a blind father.
01:20We have four adult siblings trapped in this incredibly dark, incestuous codependency.
01:26Right.
01:27And they're all living on this stunning, totally isolated estate on the Spanish coast.
01:32Yeah.
01:32Just completely walled off and inherited luxury.
01:35And that extreme isolation and, you know, the very specific madness it breeds, that is exactly what we are focusing
01:41on for today's Deep Dive.
01:43Definitely.
01:43We're looking at the highly polarizing new film, Rosebush Pruning.
01:47It premieres July 10th in UK cinemas via MUBI.
01:51And it just had its world premiere at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival.
01:56Where it was nominated for the Golden Bear, actually.
01:58Exactly.
01:58And a U.S. release is going to follow soon.
02:00So our mission today is to figure out exactly what this movie is trying to achieve.
02:04Right.
02:04The big question.
02:04Is it a brilliant, potthroat satire of class, fashion, and extreme privilege?
02:09Or is it just like a shallow, taboo-baiting provocation?
02:13Something that just mistakes pure shock value for actual meaning.
02:18Exactly.
02:18That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?
02:20Right.
02:20Because looking at the sources we have, this film hasn't just prompted mild disagreement.
02:24I mean, it has divided audiences and critics right down the middle.
02:29Aggressively.
02:29It really has.
02:30But, you know, whether you consider yourself a hardcore cinephile or you're just someone
02:35fascinated by the bizarre psychology of the ultra-rich, this film offers a masterclass.
02:41Oh, totally.
02:42It's a masterclass in how extreme, unchecked isolation warps human behavior.
02:48So today, we're going to explore the cinematic DNA of this project, the brilliant way it subverts
02:53its own characters' archetypes, and, well, why it's causing such a massive fundamental rift among critics.
02:59I really want to get into the actual plot of the movie, but looking through these notes,
03:03I don't think we can understand what happens without first talking about the soil this family
03:08is planted in.
03:08Yeah, the environment is key.
03:10Exactly.
03:11Both in the world of the film itself and in the history of cinema.
03:13It's crucial here.
03:15It's completely unavoidable.
03:16The film carries a very specific, very heavy pedigree that dictates how you're supposed to
03:22read the behavior of these characters.
03:24So let's look at the Taylor family first.
03:26Yeah.
03:27You have these ridiculously wealthy Americans who have relocated to Spain.
03:31The father is played by Tracy Letts, and he's blind.
03:35Right.
03:35And then you have the four siblings.
03:37You've got Anna, played by Riley Keough, who is incredibly calm, very precise, and clearly
03:43hiding something behind that composure.
03:45Oh, absolutely.
03:46Then you have Robert, played by Lucas Gage, who operates as the most obviously unhinged,
03:51chaotic element of the group.
03:52Yeah, he's a lot.
03:53He is.
03:53And you have Ed, played by Callum Turner, who is a whole separate conversation we'll get
03:58to in a second.
03:59We definitely will.
04:00A fun piece of trivia for you, by the way.
04:02Yeah.
04:02Kristen Stewart and Josh O'Connor were originally cast in this film.
04:05Oh, wow.
04:06Yeah.
04:06But both had to drop out, which is how Riley Keough and Callum Turner stepped in.
04:10Which is a massive tonal shift in casting.
04:12I mean, think about it.
04:13Totally different vibe.
04:14Right.
04:15Think about the nervous kinetic energy Kristen Stewart brings versus the icy precision of Riley
04:20Q.
04:21Yeah, it's night and day.
04:22That swap alone shapes the entire energy of the film.
04:25But the really important thing to understand about these siblings isn't just their individual
04:29quirks.
04:30It's how they orbit the eldest brother, Jack, who's played by Jamie Bell.
04:34Jack is the linchpin.
04:35He is the center of gravity.
04:37All four siblings are deeply uncomfortably entangled with him in a world where incest isn't just
04:43happening.
04:44It's totally normalized.
04:45Right.
04:46Honestly, the way I was thinking about it while reviewing our sources, it's like the Taylor
04:52family estate is an isolated Galapagos island.
04:55A Galapagos island.
04:56Okay.
04:57Walk me through the mechanics of that.
04:58Well, think about how evolution works on the Galapagos, right?
05:02When a piece of land breaks off from the mainland and sits out in the ocean for millions of years,
05:07the animals there evolve in completely unique, sometimes bizarre ways.
05:12Right.
05:12Because they're separated.
05:14Exactly.
05:14Birds lose the ability to fly because they have no natural predators.
05:19So in the Taylor house, these siblings have lost their basic moral compass because they
05:24have no financial predators.
05:26Oh, that's a great way to put it.
05:27Yeah.
05:28Wealth has completely insulated them from the consequences of their actions.
05:32So their empathy, their understanding of normal human boundaries just devolved.
05:39Exactly.
05:39They've been cut off from normal society for so long that they've created a completely
05:44unique moral ecosystem that makes sense only to them.
05:48What's fascinating here is how perfectly that Galapagos environment connects to the film's
05:52source material.
05:53Right.
05:54Because it's an adaptation.
05:55Yeah, rosebush pruning isn't a wholly original concept.
05:58It's actually a loose adaptation of a 1965 Italian film called Fists in the Pocket, directed
06:03by Marco Bellocchio.
06:05And from what I read, that original film was hugely controversial, right?
06:09Like, it wasn't exactly a crowd pleaser in the mid-60s.
06:12Oh, massively controversial.
06:14At the time, it was considered one of the most transgressive debut features in European
06:18cinema.
06:19Wow.
06:19Yeah.
06:20Fists in the Pocket is about a young man who decides to murder members of his own
06:24deeply dysfunctional family, one by one.
06:27Just one by one.
06:28Yep.
06:29All to free his seemingly normal brother from the burden of caring for them.
06:33It is disturbing.
06:34It is darkly funny.
06:35And it basically created the entire template for European art films about families acting
06:41as systems of mutual captivity.
06:43Okay, so they took that 1965 template of mutual captivity, but they ran it through the modern
06:49creative team behind this new movie, which is just a wild combination.
06:53It really is.
06:54Because the script is by Ethemus Philippou.
06:56Right.
06:57And he's widely considered the architect of the Greek weird wave.
07:00Wait, let me stop you there because Greek weird wave gets thrown around a lot in film
07:03circles.
07:04But for someone listening who hasn't taken a modern cinema studies class, what does that
07:08actually mean in practice?
07:09That's a great question.
07:10If you haven't seen his previous films, things like Dogtooth, The Lobster, or The Killing
07:15of a Sacred Deer, the weird wave style is essentially about stripping all the expected emotion out
07:21of extreme situations.
07:22Okay, so like deadpan.
07:24Extreme deadpan.
07:26Imagine a character delivering a horrific threat, like telling someone they are going to murder
07:30them, but they use the exact same flat, bored, monotone voice you'd use to ask someone
07:36to pass the salt.
07:37Oh, wow.
07:38That's unsettling.
07:39Very.
07:40The dialogue is stilted, hyper-literal, and completely devoid of normal affect.
07:45Philippou treats major social taboos like incest or murder as neutral, everyday facts.
07:51And that script is being directed by Karim Ayunuz, who made Motel Destino and the Invisible
07:56Life of Yerdus Yusmo.
07:58So you have this incredibly deadpan, perverse writing style colliding with Ayunzi's incredibly
08:04lush, gorgeous visual.
08:06Yeah, the contrast is intense.
08:07But I have to push back on this approach a little bit.
08:09I mean, is treating incest and murder with total deadpan neutrality actually making a
08:14profound point about humanity?
08:16Or is it just the filmmakers being edgy for the sake of it?
08:19That's the debate.
08:19Because reading through the material, sometimes it feels like they just want to see how uncomfortable
08:23they can make the audience without actually saying anything real.
08:26And that is exactly the tension that defines the entire movie.
08:30That's the tightrope.
08:31It's walking.
08:32Is it bravery or is it just self-indulgence?
08:34Right.
08:35The film has been described as dogtooth in a Spanish villa, or kind hearts and coronets
08:40reimagined by a European edgelord.
08:42That's hilarious.
08:43Or even a sleazy companion piece to the show Succession.
08:46And, you know, all of those descriptions are accurate, but they're also incomplete.
08:51Why are incomplete?
08:51Because they miss the specific dynamic that kicks the plot into motion.
08:55Right.
08:55The thing that finally shatters that deadpan neutrality.
08:58Which brings us back to our Galapagos Island, because an ecosystem like that only survives
09:03if it stays perfectly isolated.
09:05Exactly.
09:05But eventually, an invasive species is going to wash up on shore and threaten the entire
09:10delicate balance.
09:11And in this film, that invasive species is a woman named Martha.
09:15Yes.
09:16Jack, the eldest brother, the linchpin of the family, announces out of nowhere that he is
09:21bringing home a girlfriend from the outside world.
09:24And Martha is played by Elle Fanning.
09:26And her arrival just ruins everything.
09:28It is the first genuine threat this closed system has ever experienced.
09:32Because she is from the outside.
09:34Right.
09:34She's not part of the ecosystem.
09:36She hasn't been breathing their recycled air.
09:38She can see exactly what is happening in this house.
09:40And this is where Ed steps into the spotlight.
09:42That lack of consequences we talked about earlier.
09:45That total insulation from reality.
09:47Yeah.
09:48That is exactly what makes Ed completely misread the situation when the real world walks through
09:53their front door.
09:54Okay.
09:54Let's dig into Ed.
09:56Callum Turner's character.
09:57Ed is actually the narrator of the film, which is a wild choice by the filmmakers.
10:03It really is.
10:04Because Ed is, well, the sources describe him this way very accurately.
10:07He's an empty-headed fashionista.
10:09He is profoundly lacking in self-awareness.
10:12He really is.
10:13He's recently befriended an older man and doesn't even seem to recognize that his own feelings
10:18are romantic.
10:19Right.
10:19He's just oblivious.
10:20Completely.
10:21He is just drifting aimlessly through this opulent, walled-off life.
10:25But he considers himself very profound.
10:27Oh, he thinks he's a philosopher.
10:28Yes.
10:29He drops these self-invented catchphrases that he thinks are incredible philosophical insights.
10:35And his defining one, the one that actually gives the movie its title, is, um, people are
10:40like roses.
10:41Families are like rose bushes.
10:43And rose bushes need pruning.
10:45It is such a wonderfully terrifying line because of how literally he takes it.
10:50Ed decides to protect his brother Jack.
10:53Jack, he decides he's going to prune the rose bush.
10:56Meaning he is going to methodically murder his own family members to free Jack.
11:02So Jack can live a normal life with Martha.
11:04Yep.
11:04That's the plan.
11:05He starts with the ones he thinks are the most terrible and just plans to work his way
11:08through the list one by one.
11:10But we have to clarify the tone of this crime spree because this goes back to the weird
11:13wave sensibility.
11:14Right.
11:14This isn't a sleek, high-octane thriller.
11:17You aren't watching a brilliant mastermind execute a flawless heist.
11:21It is a black comedy of murderous incompetence.
11:24Because he's a silver spoon rich kid trying to be an assassin.
11:27Imagine someone who has had a staff pick up after them their entire life, suddenly trying
11:32to execute a master plan that requires meticulous attention to detail.
11:36Precisely.
11:37The sources point out that his errors are frequent and his errors are deadly.
11:41He approaches murder the same way a clueless billionaire approaches a DIY home renovation.
11:46With unearned confidence.
11:47Upon unearned confidence and catastrophic results.
11:50But what makes Ed's narrations so fascinating, despite the fact that he is constantly messing
11:55up, is his absolute sincerity.
11:57Right.
11:58He means well.
11:58In a sick way.
12:00He genuinely believes he is the most clear-eyed person in the room.
12:03He thinks his rosebush metaphor is profound philosophy.
12:08He thinks his murderous plan is a noble, tragic sacrifice.
12:11But he is wrong about all of it.
12:13And his biggest mistake isn't just his incompetence at murder.
12:16It's that he has completely misread the invasive species he is supposedly helping.
12:21He completely miscalculates who Martha is.
12:24Here's where it gets really interesting.
12:25Martha is introduced to the family as this delicate naive.
12:28She is soft-spoken, easily overwhelmed.
12:31She clearly looks totally out of place in this hyper-wealthy, bizarre Taylor world.
12:36Yeah, she seems so fragile.
12:38You look at her and think, oh, she is in so much danger around these predators.
12:43But she is not the one in danger here.
12:45Not even a little bit.
12:46The twist is that Martha is actually a manipulative gold digger who fully intends to marry into the
12:52Taylor family's immense wealth.
12:54Right.
12:54She presents as fragile, but she wants the money.
12:58She sees the family with crystal clarity.
13:01And she is far more capable of surviving in their twisted ecosystem than anyone expects.
13:07And that is arguably the film's smartest narrative move.
13:09I mean, think about the Taylor family dynamics we discussed.
13:12Everyone is putting on a performance to survive each other.
13:14Yeah, Ed is performing profundity.
13:16Right.
13:17Anna is performing calm.
13:18Robert is performing chaos.
13:19But Martha is the only character in the entire film whose performance has a legible grounded
13:25goal.
13:25She wants the bag.
13:26Yeah.
13:26And she knows exactly how to play them to get it.
13:28She absolutely wants the bag.
13:30And the irony the film builds toward is just delicious.
13:33Ed is painstakingly trying to prune the family tree to free his brother so his brother can have
13:38a normal life with Martha.
13:39Right.
13:39But Ed is executing this grand murderous plan on behalf of a woman who probably doesn't even
13:44want the normal life he's trying to give them.
13:47Oh, definitely not.
13:47Martha is playing a much longer game than Ed's little rosebush metaphor can even begin
13:53to accommodate.
13:54And we really have to talk about Elle Fanning's performance here because the sources are unanimous
13:59on this.
14:00Elle Fanning has spent years and years playing the delicate ingenue.
14:04Yeah, the soft, ethereal princess.
14:06Like Aurora in Maleficent.
14:08And in this film, she takes that exact image, that exact cultural baggage, and systematically
14:14dismantles it.
14:15It's brilliant.
14:15She uses her signature breathy voice and do-out posture, which usually signals innocence,
14:20to actively manipulate Ed.
14:23She's weaponizing our own cinematic expectations against us.
14:26It is universally agreed upon in the reviews that she is the best part of the film by a
14:31wide margin.
14:32Oh, for sure.
14:32He understands the assignment perfectly.
14:34I mean, how does a seemingly soft character survive in a house of predators?
14:39By making the predators think she's prey until it's too late.
14:42Just as Martha pulls the wool over the Taylor family's eyes by presenting as one thing and
14:47acting as another, this film pulled a massive bait and switch on critics.
14:51It really did.
14:52Half the theater thought they were watching a profound satire, and the other half felt totally
14:57scammed.
14:58It has split the reviews right down the middle in a way you rarely see.
15:02It has produced some of the most vehemently divided criticism of any film this year.
15:07The hostility in some of these reviews is palpable.
15:11I'm just going to lay out the completely impartial facts of the reviews here, because the contrast
15:15is wild.
15:16Go for it.
15:17In the positive camp, you have places like MUBI calling it a wickedly cutthroat satire
15:22of class, fashion, and privilege.
15:25The experiment called it a bad taste riot.
15:27A bad taste riot, yeah.
15:29IndieWire called it ravishing yet perverse.
15:31And as we mentioned, the audience at the Berlin Film Festival gave it a standing ovation.
15:35So a very strong positive reception from a segment of the critical world that really values
15:40transgression.
15:41Right.
15:42But then you look at the negative camp, and they pull absolutely no punches.
15:45The movie Waffler literally called the filmmaker an insufferable European edgelord.
15:51Ouch!
15:52I know.
15:53The Hollywood Reporter dismissed it as shallowness with style in a mixed bag satire.
15:59They essentially argued that being provocative isn't the same thing as being profound, and
16:03they found the whole exercise exhausting.
16:06But even with that massive schism, there is a middle ground.
16:09There is a unifying consensus across all the reviews, both positive and negative.
16:14Oh, the visuals.
16:15The visuals.
16:16Everyone agrees the film looks extraordinary.
16:19Karima Inus uses the lush Spanish sun, the beautiful villa exteriors, that incredible
16:24Mediterranean light, and contrasts it directly with these incredibly ugly, perverse deeds.
16:29Yeah, the cinematography is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
16:32It really is.
16:33The cast is also universally praised for being committed well beyond what the material might
16:38actually deserve.
16:38So if the visuals are universally praised, and the acting is recognized as great, what
16:43is the actual breaking point for people?
16:45Why the visceral hatred from half the critics?
16:48Well, this raises an important question about the legacy of F. The Miss Philippou's most
16:52famous film, Dogtooth.
16:53Okay, let's get into that.
16:54The disagreement among critics really hinges on whether Philippou's weird way of sensibility
16:59works in this specific context.
17:00In Dogtooth, treating incest and violence as neutral facts with no emotional weight worked
17:06because that film had an iron-clad internal logic.
17:11Right.
17:11The characters in Dogtooth were raised from birth in a literal compound with a fabricated
17:16language.
17:16So their deadpan delivery was a symptom of their abuse.
17:20It felt necessary for the world they built.
17:22It wasn't just a stylistic quirk.
17:23It was the entire point of the movie.
17:25Exactly.
17:26The honest assessment that threads through both the positive and negative reviews of
17:30rosebush pruning is this.
17:31Yeah.
17:32If you watched Dogtooth and felt nothing, you will absolutely feel nothing here.
17:36But if you found the deadpan approach in Dogtooth genuinely unsettling and fascinating,
17:42then rosebush pruning has enough of that quality to justify its runtime.
17:45But it doesn't have the same structural precision, does it?
17:48No, it lacks the internal precision of Dogtooth.
17:51The Taylor family wasn't raised in a fabricated reality.
17:53They were just rich and insulated.
17:55It's just rich kids.
17:56Yeah.
17:56So the weirdness feels a bit more applied rather than organic, but it carries all of
18:02its unapologetic posture.
18:05It exists in a tradition of European cinema that absolutely refuses to apologize for its
18:10ugliness.
18:12Bellocchio's original Fist in the Pocket didn't apologize.
18:15Right.
18:15And rosebush pruning does not apologize.
18:18So what does this all mean?
18:19When we step back from the murderous incompetence, the incredible Mediterranean lightning and the critical
18:23dogfights, what is this film actually trying to convey?
18:27Well, it's definitely not a movie about horticulture.
18:30Definitely not.
18:31It seems clear that it's a satire of a very specific class of person.
18:35The ultra-wealthy who have sealed themselves inside their own bubble so completely that
18:40they've generated their own twisted morality.
18:42Precisely.
18:43From the outside, the Taylor family looks completely insane.
18:46But from the inside, their logic is just how things work.
18:50Yeah.
18:50To them, it's normal.
18:51Right.
18:51They don't experience their extreme isolation as a deprivation.
18:54They experience it as a necessary protection from a lesser world.
18:59They don't experience incest as a horrific transgression.
19:02They experience it as ultimate intimacy.
19:05And when Ed decides to murder his siblings, in his mind, it isn't monstrous.
19:10It's just gardening.
19:11It's just pruning the rosebush.
19:12It's just pruning.
19:13And I think that's what the film wants you to wrestle with regarding privilege.
19:18When you have enough money and insulation to be entirely separated from consequence, right
19:24and wrong simply become matters of personal preference.
19:27That's a chilling thought.
19:28It is.
19:29Ioniz and Philippou are betting that this extreme, bloody metaphor is a brilliant observation
19:35about closed systems.
19:37And as the reviews show, the jury is still very much out on whether they succeeded in
19:42saying something profound or if they just made a beautifully lit movie to shock people
19:46into paying attention.
19:47Which leaves us with a final thought to consider, something that goes beyond just critiquing the
19:52film's success as a satire.
19:54Think about the sealed worlds in your own life.
19:57Oh, that's just true.
19:57We all have them, even if we don't have a Spanish villa, your workplace, a tight-knit
20:02friend group, your own family.
20:04What internal logic have you accepted as totally normal simply because you've been inside the
20:09bubble for so long that you've stopped testing it against the outside world?
20:12That's deep.
20:13When does loyalty to that closed system stop being a virtue and start becoming a trap?
20:19That is a fascinating question to take away.
20:22Because we might not be millionaires on the Mediterranean, but we all build walls.
20:27And we all convince ourselves that the way things work inside our walls is the only way things
20:32can work.
20:32We do.
20:33And sometimes it takes an outside perspective, an invasive species, to show us how strange
20:38our own gardens have really become.
20:40Wow.
20:40Well, if you want to see exactly how strange the Taylor family garden gets, Rosebush Printing
20:45is distributed by MUBI.
20:47It's in UK cinemas starting July 10th with a U.S. release following soon.
20:51So keep an eye out for those dates.
20:53Definitely check it out if you're ready for it.
20:55Yeah.
20:55Thank you for joining us in the garden for this deep dive.
20:57Like Ed says, people are like roses, families are like rosebushes, some roses are worth keeping
21:03and some aren't.
21:05And honestly, the fact that this film isn't always sure which is which, and that it sparks
21:08this intense, visceral debate among anyone who watches it, is exactly what makes the cinema
21:13experience feel so alive.
21:14Just, you know, keep an eye out for the wolves.

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