Review: Poor Things

Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight.

The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos' films chronicle excessive and outlandish behavior in settings where one might expect more decorum - the royal palace in "The Favourite" or the wealthy suburbs of "Dogtooth" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" - and his latest follows the story of a woman's journey of exploration as her occasional shocking behavior clashes against a society in which she is learning the rules as she goes along.

Sort of a Frankenstein story, the picture follows the adventures of Bella (a very game Emma Stone), whose body was discovered in a canal after the person who inhabited it jumped off a bridge. The carcass is rescued by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a deformed surgeon who transplants the brain of the baby into the dead woman's head and brings her back to life. Bella is essentially a child in a woman's body, albeit one with crude and outrageous impulses.

Baxter brings in an assistant, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who becomes a friend and eventual romantic interest for Bella. However, Bella discovers sex and realizes that there's a lot about the world from which she's protected that she doesn't know about when a cad named Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, portraying the character with a sniveling affect of which I didn't know he was capable) whisks her away, prompting her to run off and go out into the world to discover herself.

Let's just say the journey is pretty outlandish. The picture is filled with fairly provocative sex scenes and there's an entire passage in which Bella gets introduced to the world's oldest profession that is sure to push some buttons. But the film obviously cares about Bella and the women in her orbit, while most of the men - Dr. Baxter and Max are the rare exceptions - are viewed as pathetic, creepy, cretinous, cowardly, amoral, and vile.

For a movie this icky - there are more than a few operation sequences and other grotesqueries that you might expect in a Lanthimos picture - it's also pretty funny, and much of the humor has to do with Bella discovering that some of her behavior isn't so proper - such as threatening to punch a screaming baby or making commentary on how crisp a pastry is after someone discusses the death of a loved one.

Previously, Lanthimos' work has either really worked for me - "Dogtooth" was unforgettable and "The Favourite" deserved the laudits it received - while other entries in his oeuvre - such as "Alps" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," which felt like the director was trying too hard to the point of being nearly risible - have not.

"Poor Things" is his finest work to date. It's bursting with imagination, incredible visuals and gorgeous compositions; its first half is rendered in gorgeous black and white; and it boasts numerous stellar performances. In the hands of a lesser actress, the character of Bella might not have worked - much of her early dialogue is in a broken form of communication in which she pieces together meaning through nonsensical language (my favorite is her reference to sex as "furious jumping") - but Stone really brings her to life. And Dafoe gives a wonderfully subtle performance as the good doctor.

Lanthimos isn't really telling us a story here that we haven't heard before - it's a more gentle version of Frankenstein, but if the lead character were a woman who finds herself making her own way in the world, despite patriarchal figures attempting to stifle her growth. 

But it's in the telling that "Poor Things" is unique - it's often incredible to look at, its dialogue has such a strange but discernible rhythm, its storytelling is assured, and its performances are strong across the board Did I mention that German legend Hanna Schygulla pops up in a great supporting role? It's one of the year's most memorable and best films.