The China Mail - Ultra-wealthy behaving badly in surreal Berlin premiere

Pamela Anderson, Callum Turner, Jamie Bell, Riley Keough and Elle Fanning are among the actors telling the story of an American family mired in apparently endless amounts of inherited wealth and turning on each other in their lavish villa in the Spanish countryside.

Ed, one of the sons of the family -- played by Turner -- serves as a narrator of sorts and sums up the rest of his family as "lazy, mediocre, vapid egotists".

Award-winning playwright and actor Tracy Letts, who plays the blind, abusive patriarch of the family, said that "one of the things that this movie gets at... is that this extreme disparity in wealth breeds bad behaviour".

If the film has a political message, it is that such a situation "probably creates fascism", Letts told a press conference.

In the vein of the HBO TV series "The White Lotus" and "Succession", as well as films such as "Triangle of Sadness", "Rosebush Pruning" delights in exposing the empty coldness beneath the luxurious designer fabrics sported by the ultra-rich.

The film is inspired by the 1965 Italian film "Fists in the Pocket", by Marco Bellocchio, also about escalating dysfunction and violence within a wealthy family.

Ainouz said that that film felt to him like the "Grimm Brothers on acid", a vision which is very much present in "Rosebush Pruning", complete with incestuous overtones and a vivid colour palette for the idyllic, sun-drenched backdrop.

Bell spoke of the "operatic absurdity" that unfolds in the film, which sees the siblings' relationships take ever more bizarre and violent turns.

Anderson plays the children's mother, whose presence intrudes into the family's lives despite her apparently having been killed by wolves.

At the press conference, Ainouz also addressed the importance of public funding for film, "in a time where censorship and political judgments of what we're doing are really, really dangerous, particularly in certain countries".

The director said that in his native Brazil, "cinema would not exist if it were not for public funding".

Turner was asked at the press conference about rumours he may be the next actor to take on the role of James Bond in the iconic spy franchise.

He said it was "very early for that question" and offered no further comment, prompting Letts, 60, to raise a laugh by quipping: "I'm the next James Bond."

K.Lam--ThChM