This review is part of our coverage of the 2023 New York Film Festival.
Step: Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is a very unusual creature: a product of her doctor father Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), whom she affectionately calls “God”, she is a seemingly grown woman with a decidedly childlike attitude and physicality. She walks on her heels like a doll, moves her limbs with little use of her elbows or knees, and looks at the world with her big doe eyes as if she’s seeing it for the first time. She’s growing up, though—growing up so fast, in fact, that from learning 15 new words a day, she begins to discover (and become obsessed with) the “good feelings” that come from touching herself down there.
Her oddity attracts the attention of Max McCandless (Rami Youssef), a young research assistant at Godwin who is hired to study her progress and growth (which is significant). He falls so in love with her that he seeks her hand in marriage with the proviso that she will never be allowed to leave Godwin’s luxurious London estate. But the lawyer drafting the contract, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), turns out to be a real depraved lout who believes that such a naive man should not be locked in a cage, but run with him to make his way through a rapidly civilizing world. .
So Bella Baxter embarks on an odyssey across Europe that will awaken her eyes to the sights, sensations and sins that the world at large has to offer.
Frankenspringa: It’s weird to think about it Poor things as the most popular Greek author of The Strange Wave, Yorgos Lanthimos. accessible movie; after all, it has everything from rampant scenes of acrobatic sex to all manner of dismemberment and deformity from Godwin’s many experiments. But the director Fang And Lobster Throughout his career, he has slowly worked his way toward something equally vibrant and colorful, pushing toward his audience with one absurd feature after another.
Really, Poor things (an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel) seems like Lanthimos’ next logical step after his last collaboration with screenwriter Tony McNamara. Favorite, both warped, comic mirrors of the absurdities of wealthy society and the false promises of civilization. Gray purists may take issue with an adaptation that has so much of the novel’s distinctly Scottish characteristics. But instead, Lanthimos and McNamara choose to use the fantasy lens through which the novel views a woman’s journey in a man’s world—Mary Shelley’s. Frankenstein via Powell and Pressburger.
Indeed, there’s a touch of Tim Burton in Shauna Heath and James Price’s campy production design, elaborate LED sound stages that make London, Lisbon, Paris and even a huge passenger liner seem like one of Karel Zeman’s groovy inventions. Robbie Ryan’s wide-angle lenses return from Favoriteboth to capture every detail of the period (with all its vibrancy of bright colors) and the innate sense that Bella’s journey from oppressed woman-child to self-realized master of her destiny is being put under the microscope – another one of Father God’s films. experiments.
Poor things (Spotlight Pictures)
Godwin’s Law: Many of the film’s formal tricks and gimmicks would falter if Emma Stone’s performance didn’t keep them on point. It’s a startling twist that would be unexpected if it weren’t for the cinematic track record Stone has amassed over the decades – she’s clearly been waiting for a role as nasty, dirty, brash and challenging as this for a long time.
Like many of Frankenstein’s monsters, Stone is tasked with modulating the character from infancy to full maturity from scene to scene: her hesitant naivety in the opening acts transforms almost imperceptibly into a creature who knows her worth and refuses to give it up. Stone’s wild, searching eyes look cynically, her legs, like a scarecrow, take a confident step. Her speech, at first just fragments of stupid phrases like “touch each other’s genitals,” becomes more learned. She even begins to understand philosophy thanks to some run-ins with people like Jerrod Carmichael’s cynical philosopher. “We are all cruel animals,” he tells her with a tired look; This seems profound at first, until a wiser Bella realizes the truth: he’s just a scared little boy who can’t handle the world.
As Bella claims freedom over her body and sexuality, she also demands freedom for her identity and her ability to make her way in the world. By the time she reaches Paris, her views have even turned to the ethics and dignity of sex work, not to mention the egalitarian ideals of socialism.
The supporting roles naturally hold their own: Dafoe is a rather dry, irritable father figure whose own shell softens as his love for Bella grows in her absence. And then there’s Ruffalo, who plays the rake with all the gusto he’s accumulated after years of cashing Marvel paychecks. (If you liked Favoritethere’s a cheesy ballroom dance scene, and there’s an equally delicious scene between him and Stone.) But this is Stone’s show through and through, a twisted tale of liberation studded with more sex than a pearl-clutching zoomer on X/Twitter can handle. .
Verdict: Bye Poor things could play to a wider audience than something like Fang, don’t confuse Lanthimos with betrayal. These are all explorations of the same problem: dissecting our human behavior to examine it through an alien lens. Lobster And Favorite can spit out these darkly funny observations through clenched teeth, but Poor things rushes towards them with abundant hugs. It’s an odyssey of sugar and violence worth taking on.
Where to see: Poor things December 8th, stumbling into the cinema for another furious leap.
Trailer:
