Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos gives Emma Stone one of her best – and strangest – roles in this film Poor creatures crazy, where she faces Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo.
Willem Dafoe in Poor Creatures. PHOTO BY YORGOS LANTHIMOS, PROVIDED BY SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
Emma Stone is no stranger to the offbeat and surreal world of Yorgos Lanthimos. The actress was part of the cast of The Favorite with Olivia Colman, a film that was nominated in no fewer than nine categories at the Oscars. This time the filmmaker offers her the unforgettable lead role of Bella Baxter, a young woman from the Victorian era.
Bella is the creation of Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) – “God”, his nickname – a mad scientist, a kind of cross between Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau from the island of the same name. As we quickly learn, God has transplanted the brain of a fetus into the young woman's body, which explains her primary and incoherent speech, her haphazard and hesitant gait, and her epic tantrums.
Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo PHOTO BY YORGOS LANTHIMOS, PROVIDED BY SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
Two men, armed with seemingly different intentions, circle Bella. Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), a kind of God's assistant who has been hired to document the young woman's every move and who falls in love with his subject, then Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, superbly theatrical), a lawyer and sex addict who will take him on a tour of Europe dedicated to pleasure. McCandles and Wedderburn are each, in their own way, involved in Bella's intellectual, sensual and sexual awakening, while at the same time restricting her freedom, which she absolutely resents.
Like The Lobster, The Killing of the Sacred Deer, or The Favorite (probably Lanthimos's most accessible work), Poor Creatures is a parable. Here, film fans will find something to make them think about freedom, institutionalized misogyny, sexuality and cruelty. Certainly the filmmaker's (who loosely adapted Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel of the same name) wacky universe, here filled with unlikely animal crossings and corpse dissections, may put off more than one, but that would be a shame considering Emma's exceptional performance Stone, who is sure to make an impression.
Margaret Qualley, Willem Dafoe and Ramy Youssef. PHOTO BY YORGOS LANTHIMOS, PROVIDED BY SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES
Starting December 15th, “Poor Creatures” will confuse moviegoers.
Rating: 4 out of 5