Timothée Chalamet is the new King Of Claps after Bones And All receives an 8.5-minute standing ovation in Venice.

Luca Guadagnino’s cannibal romance has set a new record for the longest applause at this year’s festival.

 

Gather ’round, children, because the prophecy has finally come true: Timothée Chalamet has been crowned our brand new King Of Claps!

That’s right: Chalamet has claimed his rightful place as the Emperor of Applause at the ongoing Venice Film Festival, where his new film with Luca Guadagnino, Bones And All, received an 8.5-minute standing ovation from the audience, according to Variety.

 

For those keeping track of Venice ovation times—the only way to know which films are the best, or at least the best at inspiring bizarre public gestures that we have to assume start feeling pretty strange around the 5-minute mark, right?—that’s the longest such applause break we’ve seen this year. The ovation outlasted Alejandro G. Iárritu’s Bardo (4 minutes) and Cate Blanchett’s Tar (6 minutes), and easily outlasted Noah Baumbach’s pathetic, why-even-get-your-hands-moving 150-second response to White Noise.

If the sheer number of times critics felt moved to slap one of their hands with the other isn’t enough to persuade you, rest assured: the film has also received positive feedback from the verbal side of viewers’ brains. The film, a “cannibal romance” that both Guadagnino and Chalamet have insisted was not inspired by any of their Call Me By Your Name collaborators, has received positive reviews for its blend of gore and emotion.

 

Of course, Venice filmgoers’ hands are unpredictable; who knows what might happen later this week, compelling them to stand there clapping for an even longer period of time? Refusing to look around at each other, hoping for the signal to stop? Trapped there for what seems like an eternity, hands slapping at each other in a never-ending rhythm of ritual adoration? It’s an exciting time to be a movie buff!