Review: Poor creatures! – Synevropa

09.02.2023 – VENICE 2023: Greek director turned international Yorgos Lanthimos hits the bull’s-eye with an unprecedented historical film

The long-awaited return of the Greek Oscar winner Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor beings! (+read also:
trailer
Q&A: Yorgos Lanthimos
movie postcard), is one of the most pleasant surprises of this year. A film nominated for the Golden Lion in Venice may not be easy to describe, but a mixed label such as “gothic coming-of-age sex comedy” can be a satisfying approximation to understand the nature of this film. Lanthimos’ seventh feature film is not only his second period film after Most lovely (+read also:
review
trailer
movie postcard

)but is also the second, written Tony McNamaranot the director himself. In this case, the script is adapted from a 1992 novel of the same name by a Scottish author. Alasdair Greywhich Lanthimos enriches with a stellar composition: Emma Stone, Willem Defoe, Mark Ruffalo AND ramy Yousef they are the main characters.

In the novel, an eccentric doctor brings a young woman back to life after her apparent suicide by donating the brain of her unborn child. Enthusiastic about her experiment, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Dafoe) assigns Max McCandles (Youssef) to keep an eye on her to record her development. Although there are obvious references to Frankenstein Mary Shelley, Poor Creatures! it focuses on shaping a woman, or how a woman shapes herself. Unlike the book, Lanthimos’ film reflects the point of view of the woman Bella in both content and form. While his speeches and his movements become more fluid, the world that we observe expands, becoming brighter every minute: from black and white beginnings to oversaturated colors. When she decides to elope with her famous lover Duncan Wedderburn (Ruffalo), we are shown hypnotic cityscapes of Lisbon, Alexandria and Paris, whose stylized appearance heightens Bella’s sense of awe.

Tony McNamara shifts the original setting from politically significant Victorian Glasgow to extravagant London, and in doing so the political allegory dissipates to give way to a literal meaning illustrated by Bella’s bodily way of being in the world. If Lanthimos was attracted to the idea of ​​thinking from table shaved (dream of the Enlightenment), your cinema manages to convey this through the body. Working closely with Stone, who is also a producer, ensured that the characters were gradually built with amazing results. A versatile actress, Stone excels here by offering an interpretation that embodies every stage of her character’s socialization process in posture, gait and speech. Bella’s autonomy is directly related to her sexuality, and this discovery – in many impressive sex scenes – is also reflected in her body and her movements. director of photography Most lovely

Robbie Ryan captures these changes with close-ups and fisheye shots often collected by longtime editor Lanthimos, Yorgos Mauropsaridisto create an acquaintance at a distance used at the right time.

Poor beings! reveals Lanthimos’ taste for close-ups and flamboyant aesthetics, revealing a new dimension to his creative approach to storytelling. By vastly improving Gray’s source material and choosing a more fitting ending, the Greek director has created what appears to be his most hopeful film yet. He couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate film to rid himself of his political allegories: the bodily problems underlying Poor beings! they are not only overcome, but overcome with pleasure, empathy, and plenty of poignant humour. One can never really prepare for either its showmanship or the amount of eccentric vitality it offers, despite the title’s promise.

Poor beings! is a presentation by Searchlight Pictures produced by Irish company Element Pictures and British company Film4 in collaboration with American companies Fruit Tree and TSG Entertainment. Searchlight Pictures also handles international sales.

(Translation from English)

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