Poor Things – Emma Stone transfixes in Lanthimos’s thrilling carnival of oddness

1. It may only be the beginning of the year, but it’s hard to imagine that there will be a funnier,
2. filthier, or more extravagantly peculiar film this year than Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest picture. To
3. describe Poor Things, which is adapted by Tony McNamara from the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray,
4. as creatively uninhibited hardly does justice to the wild, wild ride that this explosively inventive
5. picture takes us on. Driven by a courageous and physically committed performance from Emma
6. Stone, the film follows her journey as Bella Baxter, at the start of the picture a barely verbal blank
7. slate, who embarks on an autodidact voyage of discovery to become the ultimate self-made
8. woman.
9. Like in the book, the period is impossible to pin down exactly. The story unfolds in a parallel
10. past, a gothic, steampunk-infused Victoriana, a world that is distorted by the patriarchal power
11. disparities in society. Without giving away the specifics, the picture is a subversive spin on Mary
12. Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the role of Bella’s creator and guardian taken by unorthodox genius
13. Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Called “God” by Bella, Godwin bears grotesque scars on his face
14. and body resulting from his childhood experience as the subject of his father’s deranged scientific
15. curiosity – an experience that failed to stymie his own rather baroque quest for empirical facts.
16. When Godwin recruits eager student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to keep a record of Bella’s
17. accelerated progress, her grasp of language expands exponentially.
18. But Bella’s hunger knowledge and experience is too voracious to be contained the
19. walls Godwin’s mansion. She grasps the opportunity offered by caddish lawyer and man
20. about-town Duncan Wedderburn (a marvelously hammy Mark Ruffalo) and ventures forth
21. London, first to Lisbon, then by steamship to Alexandria, and finally to a Parisian brothel. As Bella’s
22. horizons broaden, so the look of the film alters to encompass her experiences. The chapter set
23. predominantly in Godwin’s home is black and white, but once Bella ventures forth, the film shifts
24. into color. But not just any color – there’s an uncanny, hyperreal quality to the palette that makes
25. each frame look like a hand-tinted piece of Victorian postcard erotica.
26. It’s an alchemic combination, this continuing collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone, a
27. working relationship that started with The Favourite and will continue with another feature film
28. project, titled Kinds of Kindness. They unleash in each other an extra level of uninhibited artistic
29. daring that must be rooted in an uncommon degree of mutual trust. Nowhere is this more evident
30. than in the physicality of Stone’s remarkable performance. Stone’s virtuoso use of her body – the
31. way it inhabits space, the way she gradually masters her gangling, string-like limbs, the guilelessly
32. open play of emotions in her face – is one of the most crucial elements in our experience of Bella’s
33. journey.
34. That journey is supported by a deliciously eccentric score by Jerskin Fendrix. An uneasy,
35. detuned four-note motif played on flayed violin strings opens the film and returns in various
36. incarnations throughout, sounding at one point like a hippo mating with a harmonium. The gradual
37. build of intricacy and sophistication in the music brilliantly mirrors Bella’s intellectual growth.
38. Bella’s appetite for novelty is reflected in film-making that evokes a similar sense of wonder and
39. discovery in the audience. From the quirky flamboyance of Holly Waddington’s costumes to the
40. off-kilter production design by Shona Heath and James Price, Poor Things is an endlessly
41. fascinating carnival of oddness.

(Available at: www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/14/poor-things-review-yorgos-lanthimos-emma-stone-frankenstein – text specially adapted for this test).