Brilliant comedic timing has been one of the many winning skills Emma Stone has pulled from her actor toolbox since her early teen flicks, Easy A and Superbad. As with many actors who have a gift for giving us the giggles, Stone can be intensely silly like her all-timers from SNL or perfectly grounded, but something is definitely wrong with Showtime’s The Curse. Moreso, she’s not afraid to play too smart or, better still, too dumb. In Yargos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, the Oscar-winning actor employs all these techniques, delivering her most complicated, robust, and, yes, most iconic character yet. Now more than ever, Stone cannot and will not be stopped…
Part Bride of Frankenstein, part My Fair Lady, all Yargos Lanthimos (The Lobster), the story concerns a young woman named Bella Baxter (Stone) who’s been “created” by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Defoe). Although Bella is the experiment, it is the doctor whose face shares more than a passing resemblance to the famous Universal monster. Bella will need to learn (or re-learn) basic skills: walking, eating, and, above all, conversing. By George, will she get it? She will. And then some.
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Based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, the story is broken up into five segments, each a particular moment of growth/enlightenment for Bella. The first act is shot in a wondrous black & white, often employing a fisheye lens, a staple of Lanthimos’ work. For cinematographer Robbie Ryan, who, along with screenwriter Tony McNamara, previously collaborated with the director on The Favourite, each segment allows the DP a full palate of tricks. Some scenes are painterly, with compositions favoring bold colors and impossible architectural designs over reality with the help of art director Renátó Cseh.
Other scenes are deliberately of the live theater staging variety, complete with fake backdrops that emphasize the actor’s performances over any specific time or place. Holly Waddington’s costume design are beyond the expected “Oscar bait” specificity to any given period. Along with Claire Campbell’s hair and make-up (Stone’s eyebrows!), there’s ample talent behind the camera, all delivering a forceful, magical, unreal excellence.
And all of it would be wasted if not for how exceptional Emma Stone is.
The cringey My Fair Lady will they/won’t they between Eliza and Dr. Henry is wisely absent as Defoe is simply a father figure here. Although that still comes with a lot of baggage, the story more than happily unpacks. Bella’s suitors come in the form of the wildly charismatic buffoon Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) and “nice guy” Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef). Both actors are keen to subvert their onscreen personas in surprising, funny, and sometimes sympathetic ways. I say “sometimes” because Poor Things’ central theme is how society (i.e., mostly men) will stop at nothing to control Bella.
This is where Stone’s choices on how to play certain scenes are brilliant. Bella maybe be naive to how the world works, especially in terms of sexual politics, but her confidence not only easily poo poos dumb patriarchal notions of submissive versus dominant but Stone is always straddling such tricky topics with humor and common sense. Why shouldn’t she have fun with jumping on whomever she wants? Is it not a waste of her time to be bored or unsatisfied? As the trailer suggests, she may even have to hit a random baby if she so desires. Why the heck not? (And in her defense, the baby was being very loud.)
Yorgos Lanthimos has never shied away from weirdness. Akin to Charlie Kaufman, the Greek-born filmmaker has a gift for presenting strange and extraordinary situations as commonplace. Whether a man might turn into a lobster, or a deer might hold the very soul of a damaged broken heart surgeon, he never really revels in the oddness. It’s rarely “Wow, how strange?!” but more “hmmm, that is odddddd.” So when I say this might be the directors’ strangest work yet, it’s no small feat.
In an interview, Stone posits that the core idea of Poor Things is “What would a woman be if she could start from scratch?” Enlightening, daring, and most of all, “Whatever she wants to be” should always be the answer. Bravo, Emma Stone.
Poor Things opens in select theaters on December 8, 2023.
