A pregnant woman throws herself off a bridge, determined to end it all, but doesn’t reckon with scientist Godwin Baxter, who returns her body instead. The goal is to give her a new life by implanting the brain of the fetus she is carrying.
Poor creatures! The latest film from the visionary and brilliant Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (we’ll see him in theaters January 25, 2024, ed.) opens with this scene and tells the story of Bella Bexton, woman-childrecreated as in Frankenstein Mary Shelley, an infantile mind but a sensual body, who at a certain moment decides to find out who she is and what she can do-give in the world. A wonderful, ironic, crazy, eccentric and funny film, modern despite the gothic and nineteenth century setting, which, by adapting the original novel written in 1992 by Alasdair Gray, actually knows how to connect with modernity, giving the Venice Film Festival another revelation
One question arises: what would a woman do if she started from scratch?
She would try to see things from different points of view, as the main character does, she would discover their value, she would explore her own instincts, cerebral and sexual. Bella, in fact, was played by Emma Stone in a state of grace (better than LaLaLandfor whose role he received an Oscar, and here in Venice, despite his absence, remains among the contenders for the Volpi Cup), he does not seem to understand his real possibilities. She learns behavior, words, more and more updated languages, but at a certain moment something clicks, all this is not enough for her. Finally start being more reasonable. It happens when the assistant of its creator falls in love with him: for this, she decides that before marrying him, she will have to go beyond the walls of this house, see what surrounds him. It will be intimate journey and trainingfrom London to Lisbon, where he will be accompanied by an experienced and dissolute lawyer Duncan Wedderburn, the one who should draw up a marriage contract (he is played by the equally talented Mark Ruffalo), and with whom he will have to experience sex. desire, sin, excess. He learns first hand that there is so much more to discover in the feminine and masculine universe.. She will even end up in a brothel, becoming his favorite, but at the same time she will gain experience, awareness even on her own body, challenging the system, to the detriment of herself. manipulative menhunted only for their own pleasure, to the detriment of those who believed that this is just an object of search, and did not do well with mathematics.
“The project is hard to describe,” said Lanthimos, which actually fits well into the director’s theatrical journey. (It would be enough to watch films such as The is a lobster or Sacred Deer Sacrifice), which returns to well-known themes such as social conventions, where it talks excessively about freedom, women’s emancipation, the figure of a woman in society, the relationship between a man and a woman. Bella-Emma Stone is really looking for her individuality, she is developing, but for this she must see every perspective, without shame or prejudice. He is eventually reborn for the better, performing as one. independent, determined, self-confident protagonist. He is not ugly or poor, but a wonderful creature, and now he knows it.