Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos toys with a number of taboos in his wild saga of a child trapped in the body of a woman.
A kind of Lisbon: Emma Stone faces her future
Few directors, however talented, have had the gall to put their wildest ideas on camera. Yorgos Lanthimos follows in the rarefied slipstream of Wiene, Fellini, Ken Russell, Jaromil Jireš and Peter Greenaway. However, he is able to fully exploit the sharper tools now available to modern filmmakers. Opening out the Frankenstein myth to embody a feminist morality tale, the Greek director has forged a one-of-a-kind work that plays with philosophy, language and morality with unalloyed glee. While adopting a theatrical artifice for his street scenes and interiors (the film was shot in Budapest), Lanthimos draws on all the expertise of modern prosthetics for his more corporeal indulgences.
A victim of his father’s scientific experiments, Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) is now a world-class surgeon who has learned “to carve with compassion.” While his own father put his feelings to one side, even while branding his son’s genitals, Godwin – or ‘God’ – is attempting to blend the worlds of science and humanity. His greatest creation is Bella, who he has resurrected from the body of a pregnant suicide case by transplanting the living brain of the unborn baby into the cranium of the corpse. Bella is coming along nicely, although her fumbling motor skills and predilection for regurgitating her food and breaking things, means she must be kept under lock and key. But her curiosity knows no bounds and while she has the mind of a child, she has the body of a beautiful and sexually mature woman…
No doubt Poor Things will offend many, but beneath the director’s hubristic daring there is the theme of confronting life anew and discovering all the wonders of knowledge, science and sex. In many respects, Bella is a Victorian embodiment of Eve, a clean slate open to all the bounty that the world has to offer. Indeed, Bella Baxter is one of the great female parts of the 21st century – if only there were an actress brave enough to inhabit her. At sea with polite society, Bella speaks her mind and cherry-picks the language at her disposal, merrily employing the word “empirical” yet knowing not what a banana is. Such a mindset wins her some surprising friends while shocking the male hypocrites who darken her door. Lanthimos is not just holding up a lens to madness, but our attitude to it, in the process blurring the parameters of what is normal. His own ally is his thespian muse, Emma Stone (The Favourite), who throws herself into the part with astonishing abandon, sporting herself in ways most Hollywood stars would flinch at the thought of.
Emma Stone is in good company with Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo and Kathryn Hunter (the latter as a lobe-chewing madam), but this is Emma Stone’s movie and she gives it her all, whether strutting around like a marionette or mangling the English language. It is a joy to hear her describe something as “foolish good” or her own private quarters as “genital pieces.” To complement the fruity dialogue, Lanthimos provides his characteristic pictorial flair, frequently peering at the action through a fisheye keyhole, while packing his mise en scène with visual jokes (the actor Willem Dafoe is referenced with a shot of a Moorish idol, the disfigured fish he voiced in Finding Nemo). The sets are suitably fantastical while the discordant chords on viola and cello keep our nerves on edge. There is plenty to take away from Poor Things, to unpack and to discuss, and it is a small miracle that such a daring, outrageous work like this can secure a wide release with major stars attached. To which we owe to the clout and fevered imagination of Yorgos Lanthimos.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Hanna Schygulla, Margaret Qualley, Vicki Pepperdine, Suzy Bemba, Kate Handford, Vivienne Soan, Tom Stourton, John Locke, Keeley Forsyth, Laurent Borel.
Dir Yorgos Lanthimos, Pro Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, Screenplay Tony McNamara, from the novel by Alasdair Gray, Ph Robbie Ryan, Pro Des Shona Heath and James Price, Ed Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Music Jerskin Fendrix, Costumes Holly Waddington, Sound Johnnie Burn, Dialect coach Neil Swain.
Film4/Element Pictures/TSG Entertainment-Searchlight Pictures.
141 mins. UK/USA/Ireland. 2023. US Rel: 22 December 2023. UK Rel: 12 January 2024. Cert. 18.
