Our review of Poor Creatures!, a film by Yorgos Lanthimos with Emma Stone in the role of Bella, a newborn creature in the body of a woman who has the whole world to discover
ORIGINAL TITLE: Poor Things!. TYPE: Comedy, Drama. NATION: United States of America. REGIA: Yorgos Lanthimos. CAST: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael. DURATION: 141 minutes. DISTRIBUTOR: Searchlight Pictures. OUTING TO THE CINEMA: 25/01/2024.
He won the Golden Lion at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Film and is well launched with 11 nominations at the Oscars, where it seems impossible that it won’t win even one. Poor creatures! is the new extravagant film by Yorgos Lanthimos con Emma Stonetwo names that often bring the public and critics together in a blaze of enthusiasm.
Plot and trailer | Review Poor creatures!
Victorian London: Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is a woman with the brain of a newborn baby, implanted in her by her father’s doctor Godwin Baxter (Willem Defoe), after that in his previous life he is committed suicide by jumping into the Thames while pregnant. The doctor could have saved her, but what was the point of opposing his will to end it? He will then conduct an experiment, supported by the scientific method, the compass of his actions just as his father had carried out senseless experiments of bloody comedy on him.
The woman with initially extremely childish attitudes will gradually discover the world, will grow experience after experience, will make the doctor’s assistant who promises her marriage fall in love (Rami Youssef), will run off on an adventure with the fiery scoundrel Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), will discover the meaning of living in all its facets, in the name of a pure, naive and foul-mouthed freedom. From the colors of Lisbonto the twilight shores of Alexandria, Egyptto the disillusioned Paristhe journey will lead Bella to discover the positive and (not a little) negative of a highly chauvinistic world, despite the isolated enlightenment of Doctor Godwin and his assistant.
A positively intrusive direction | Review Poor creatures!
Poor creatures! it starts in black and white and timidly turns to color in the first act, the one in which Bella is somehow closed in the safety of her home, where she learns to walk and talk, where discovers happiness through autoeroticism, and explodes in bright and joyful colors on the journey he undertakes with Duncan, a typical bourgeois of his time who loves the vices of a profoundly chauvinistic society. The color choice is very precise and underlines the formation path of a creature who will soon leave every form of common conscience, although in his world he will continue to see the future with authentic innocence.
Poor creatures!, adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, is an extremely refined, simple, linear and light prism which however, as seems essential today, hides something more. Each adventure in a different place is preceded by a very short interlude sign which is absolute video art echoing the avant-garde cinema of 100 years ago. A few seconds that are an intimate surreal triangulation between Bella’s interiority, cinematography and spectator, in which once again the hand of Yorgos Lanthimos is particularly invasive. Equally extremely intrusive (we say this with the most positive meaning possible) are the musical interludes that underline the protagonist’s moods, highly evocative and bordering on dreamlike. Ultimately, every visual and acoustic element of the film is destined to mark a certain condition of Bella, which the spectator has no difficulty in identifying with.
An exceptional Emma Stone | Review Poor creatures!
The victory at the Golden Globe and the nomination (the victory would not be surprising) at the Oscars for Emma Stone come after an absolutely high level performance. Throughout the film’s duration of over two hours, she is the protagonist in the true sense, every movement, every moment is meticulously created to immerse the protagonist in a story that is as incredible as it is realistic. Throughout Poor Creatures!, essentially a whimsical and unconventional comedy, Bella is master of herself, she doesn’t let any man overwhelm her, she lives everything in the name of pure freedom, her odes to feminism rise high into the sky. Things that in the Victorian period in which the film takes place don’t seem possible, yet the suspension of the incredible is particularly simple.
Bella is a woman who thanks to her newborn brain made a clean slate and thanks to Godwin she was grew up in the absolute dominion of empiricism and positivism. He has a mind that ignores any social superstructure and therefore has the freedom to be a very pure individual, who forces everyone else to mediate with their own social stigmas, suddenly ridiculed. Above all, that of power over women by men.
Conclusions
In this film Lanthimos does not deny himself, proving to be a peculiar director to say the least with something to say. The voyeuristic pleasure of shock, silence, darkness, death, mingle in the cheerful comedy, which acquires, in doing so, a light and genuine flow. The fisheye optics, fast and undulating camera movements as if we were on a boat, sudden zooms, relate to balanced shots, sometimes symmetrical, other times very colourful, perfectly in line with the meaning of the film. The exasperated grotesque actually hides a refined and not at all obvious work in a film that deserves attention, directed and acted impeccably.
In a nutshell, the Greek director launches his Eva in a sadly timeless journey (not much has changed over the centuries in terms of man-woman relationships) through an explosive visual energy that enhances the Victorian tale of the Scot Alisdair Gray at the basis of the film, while the interpretative imagination of Emma Stone and the imaginative work of set designers and costume designers they make a film that stands out from the others released recently.
Points in favor
- Emma Stone from Oscar
- Fearless and original film
- State-of-the-art soundtrack and photography
Points against
- Ending not up to the rest of the film
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