‘Rosebush Pruning’ Review: This Ravishing Yet Perverse Family Affair Doesn’t Know What It Wants to Be

The most uncomfortable scene in “Rosebush Pruning” doesn’t involve violence or sexual perversity, although these elements are regularly entangled throughout. No, it’s when Jack (Jamie Bell) brings his new girlfriend to meet his family for lunch. These things are often awkward at the best of times and with the best of families, but this oddball mess of a household might just be the actual worst.

Awkward giggles and ruthless stares punctuate silence until the blind matriarch (played by Tracy Letts) asks his daughter to describe Martha’s (Elle Fanning) appearance to him in exhaustive detail. The obvious price gap between her Zara dress and the Bottega handbag gifted to her by Jack is cruelly teased out in what would usually be the turning point of a scene like this.

But then The Father takes it even further, calmly asking his daughter Anna (Riley Keough) to describe Martha’s breasts.