Comedy

Film review of director Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist comedy take on the Frankenstein story. Starring Emma Stone as the captivating ‘Bride’ and Mark Ruffalo.

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Synopsis

Created by a well-meaning but demented scientist (Willem Dafoe) from the brain of a baby and the body of a woman, Bella (Emma Stone) has all the hallmarks of an infant. She is ungainly, undisciplined, a messy eater and prone to noisy and aggressive outbursts.

As she matures into a young woman, rebels against the scientist’s desire to keep her shuttered up in his home. Eloping with a debauched, thrill-seeking cad (Mark Ruffalo), she discovers her sexual self with him and travels the world having many risky adventures.

Review, by Jason Day

You must experience everything, Bella. Not just the good.

Brothel keeper Swiney (Kathryn Hunter) advises her new employee.

A frankly odd and oddly frank cinematic experience is Poor Things.

Depending on your sensibilities, director Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdly comical cinematic treatments of literature, historical events or the general day-to-day are either dryly, sarcastically funny and incisive or unfunny and downright weird. I fall into the former category.

His latest movie – loosely based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – is perhaps his most obviously hilarious and definitely his most beautiful.

The script is peppered with fabulously silly (and accurate) descriptors such as “hairy business” for a woman’s private parts and Bella’s dogged pursuit of the “furious jumping” that gives her so much pleasure.

The performances are promethean popcorn perfection. Stone’s bulging-eyed, perceptive beauty is well-suited to play Bella as a mixture of innocence and latent lasciviousness. Much as Elsa Lanchester’s 1935 Bride was a highly stylised performance – all twitching walk and jerky head movements as if she as Bambi on the ice – Stone’s turn is full-on physicality but a conceptual leap ahead of Elsa. Stone not only owns her laboratory womb and delivery room, she steps outside and conquers manhood and society during a cross-globe sexual odyssey.

NB: Stone won a Golden Globe for this performance and is up for a Best Actress Oscar.

I’ve always loved Marlon Brando’s effete grandstanding in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), so I picked up on Mark Ruffalo’s splendidly OTT English accent here, a delicuously debauched sound with echos of Rupert Everett.

Diminutive grand dame of British arthouse cinema Kathryn Hunter grasps the nettle with a mini star turn as the perceptive Parisian madame who knows a few things about profit and people. Before Bella opts for a career in sin, a funeral procession passes behind her and Duncan an ironic occurrence as she will soon impart the lifeforce to the men of the capital.

Of this movie’s look – pay attention to the delectable, unworldly gorgeousness on display. Belle and Duncan’s cruise ship looks like a lavish, wind-up bath toy. During their pitstop in Alexandria, the city is a multi-story, Monegasque megopolis. And there is the lush, travelogue cinematography and ripe costumes (Stone’s are a mélange of Victoriana bustles, frills and mini skirts.

The production design is a wild take on Victorian London, with art deco houses and early automobiles with frontispiece horse heads.

Lanthimos and his crew certainly aren’t shy in showing you everything, so brace yourself for a lot of nudity, body parts and sexual acts.

I consider myself a person who is able to take most extreme things the cinema lobs my way, but thankfully the censor calls a halt to depicting certain things in Poor Things – a labotomised baby in a jar is covered up.

Other scenes are still incredibly uncomfortable. A man visits Belle to instruct his lads in the way of all flesh and then pumps her as they watch and take notes. I don’t know what’s weirder about this, the fact it made it to the final cut or that a whole group of people were behind that.

Is Poor Things a movie to try and treasure or one to pry but pass on? It’s absolutely the former – dive in, be challenged by it, be pushed by it, but definitely experience it, even if just once. Personally – I think I want to pay a return trip to Lanthimos’ world and see his incredible creations again.

See the official Searchlight Films website for more.

Cast & credits

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos. Element Pictures/Film4/Fruit Tree/Searchlight Pictures/TSG Entertainment. (18).

Producers: Ed Guiney, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrew Lowe, Emma Stone.
Writers: Tony McNamara, Alasdair Gray.
Camera: Robbie Ryan.
Music: Jerskin Fendrix.
Sets: Shona Heath, James Price.

Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Vicki Pepperdine, Kathryn Hunter, Suzy Bemba, Hanna Schygulla, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael, Margaret Qualley.