A few years ago it was a “Greek curiosity”, then it landed in Venice with Most lovely and becomes the focus of the Oscars. A huge step forward by Yorgos Lanthimos could have told the story of an ambitious man, but instead, the initiation film is an invitation to laugh furiously at the games of power. Why ne Most lovely, ten Oscar nominations, the courtesans in the service of Queen Anne of Great Britain (1665-1714) run the risk of ending up with their asses on the ground, in mud, or worse, inside a brothel at any moment. Lanthimos is not the author of good-natured pats on the back of modern society, in which he always brings out the worst. Hypocrisy and lies, crime and sectarianism, he blows up everything that comes to hand, the form shines, like the content. Naive, believing that the historical film would correct the nihilistic character. Utterly intimidated, the director conquers the genre with brutality and irreverence, taking wicked pleasure in provoking the characters who usually bring him to life and finding new material for his audacity in the glory of the kingdom.
Yorgos Lanthimos on the set of The Favorite © Fox Searchlight Pictures
Serene, humble, almost banal, unlike his movies, Lanthimos seems to be an expert in the art of staying under the radar. One senses that he would rather remain quiet and quiet in his corner. When the 2009 Cannes Film Festival presented him with the Un Certain Regard Award for Caninethe director is shocked by a lengthy questioning session during a press conference where artists are asked to explain and comment on their images. Like they don’t speak for themselves. And yet, if there are films that raise questions and reveal mysteries that we would so much like to clarify, this is it. How to sum up the story of your first film Kinettathat no one dared to hand out in the room? A kind of parable about Greek society, where the characters act out the crimes of a serial killer in a deserted seaside resort.
WITH Claw (2005) the mystery thickens and becomes more exciting: in an isolated villa, a couple keeps their adult children locked up and away from the world. At home, they learn a life that has no correspondence with reality. But the most curious imagination works in Alps (2011), Lanthimos’ first time at the Lido. The film tells about the inexorable cruelty of mourning, receives the Golden Osella for the best script and confirms the penchant for strange postulates, artificial or theoretical situations that oppose the dictates of reality.
Four years later Lobster expands the boundaries of the unusual, entering a society where celibacy is forbidden and lonely hearts are doomed to turn into a beloved animal (Lobster, 2015). And the animal also appears in the next “name” (Sacred Deer Sacrifice2017), a brutal tale of human nature that endangers the lives of a wealthy couple and has become the subject of clinical auscultation.
Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in Poor Creatures! Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Spotlight Images. © 20th Century Studios, All rights reserved.
From the surgically virtuous interior we move on to the castle of the last Stuart heir (Most lovely, 2019) and a fabulous dominance game. The three graces, endowed with strength, teeth and claws, electrify the historical film, in which men are reduced to the rank of jesters or random allies who obey the movements of the female trio. Someone wanted to dig into the director’s childhood to explain such oddity, but Yorgos Lanthimos resists any definition, especially the most banal one.
Born in Athens in 1973 and raised by a mother who died when he was only 17, he, like everyone else, had a childhood that was both special and ordinary. More fascinated by Spielberg than by Angelopoulos, he sees his country as virgin land for cinema and throws himself into it with absolute freedom. Free from all aesthetic dictates, Lanthimos studies at the only Greek film school and presents himself as his latest character, perhaps the most beautiful.
Her name is Bella Baxter, a sort of oxymoronic and syncretic “creature” conjured up by Mary Shelley and Alasdair Gray, her book Poor things, directly echoes Frankenstein. But Bella is a gothic monster (surgical fiction) and incarnation (literary and cinematic) that transcends the clinical realm into the political and cultural realm. In the hands of Dr. Lanthimos, Bella becomes a work of art, both old and new, end and beginning, one and many. A young woman was brought back to life after a suicide by drowning, she wanted to escape from her abusive husband, she was transplanted with the brain of the child she was carrying.
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone on the set of Poor Creatures! Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Spotlight Images. © 20th Century Studios, All rights reserved.
She must be saved by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe), who will see her grow up, not grow up, because her body is already the body of an adult woman. This is not the first time Lanthimos has captivated audiences before the release of his film. A master at the art of making audiences feel uncomfortable, his fascination with destabilizing imagery begins with his posters. In the image of previous and inspired actions, also posters – “posters” of Poor creatures! they leave a lasting impression, playing with Emma Stone’s face in very close-up with smeared lipstick and eye shadow applied, as a little girl would do without her mother.
Another shows her tiny body “at the head” of her adult and elegantly arranged body, which becomes the receptacle of life in operations of alchemical transmutation: physical death is the prelude to rebirth and spiritual perfection. The illusion in the trailer is a story that starts from scratch: Bella never had a childhood, she knows no fear, so will she be able to face the world with the wonder and frankness of a “newborn”? Or is she a ghost that collapses when “pieces” borrowed from other stories take control of her destiny? We recognize it at the Lido and in Emma Stone’s large turquoise eyes, at the heart of a spectacular renaissance. She is a diva and a spark of existence in an inert and normative world.