Yorgos Lanthimos is known for mining the depths of the human condition to create imaginative, anarchic comedy. With his new film, Poor Things, which has been the subject of Oscar buzz after winning the Golden Lion at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival, the director has created an exquisite epic that explores a fantastical version of Europe’s past. There are familiar elements – billowing sleeves and gilded estates – but also flying airships and bizarre animal hybrids cooked up by the film’s mad scientist, Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe).
The central character in this world is Godwin’s latest creation, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone). She is an experiment, created from the body of a woman and the brain of an unborn baby. Godwin and his research assistant, Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef), seek to control Bella as a scientific subject but she rapidly develops a mind of her own. At first she grapples with basic motor skills, but soon develops an insatiable appetite for new experiences (such as masturbation) and knowledge (of everything from geography to philosophy).
Emma Stone in Poor Things. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
This appetite sends her into the orbit of the caddish Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who whisks Bella away for a grand tour across Europe, from the summery streets of Lisbon to the brothels of Paris. As Bella witnesses the most monstrous and tender sides of humanity, we see Emma Stone deliver the most profound and audacious performance of her career.
Stone, who was also one of the movie’s producers, was excited to help shape Bella’s liberatory journey. “Bella doesn’t have any shame or trauma, or even a back story,” she says.
Tony McNamara, the acclaimed Australian screenwriter who earned an Academy Award nomination for The Favourite, also directed by Lanthimos, adapted Poor Things from Alasdair Gray’s darkly comic novel of the same name. McNamara creates a fantasy world, but the script is rooted in modern sexual politics and ideas of freedom. Stone said playing Bella in that context was freeing.
“There is really no research you can do for something like this,” she says. “Bella draws things from the men she meets, from the women she meets, from the environment she’s in, from what she’s eating. She’s like a sponge.”
Emma Stone in Poor Things. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Though Bella is considered a scientific experiment, it is the men around her who act in grotesque ways, often leading to moments of hilarity. Ruffalo is a standout, playing against type as the devilish Wedderburn.
Ruffalo says: “I was in hysterics reading the script; it was wicked and full of bawdy, irreverent humour. George Bernard Shaw said you had to get the people laughing long enough to shove the medicine down their throats and I think Tony is within that sort of tradition.”
Fairytale madness and wonder
To create the fairytale reality that magnifies Bella’s sense of awe, the production designers, James Price and Shona Heath, intricately crafted streets inspired by the satirical drawings of Parisian Albert Guillaume during the belle époque era. When creating a steampunk version of Lisbon, they used one of the world’s largest soundstages, at Korda Studios, Budapest.
Stone says: “It blew my mind because it took half an hour to walk through that entire set. There were restaurants and hotels; it was like they had created an entire city.”
This blending of the new and the old, the organic and the artificial, is also reflected in Holly Waddington’s lavish costuming. Severe Victorian silhouettes are mixed with contemporary materials, and as Bella grows, her costumes become sensual and bold.
Emma Stone in Poor Things. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures © 2023 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.
At the beginning of the film, Bella is a prisoner in the house and wears Victorian-era blouses, but never a complete outfit. Waddington says she liked the idea that Bella would start the day fully dressed but lose her clothes by lunchtime, like a lot of children.
As she grows, her outfits develop to reflect her social and sexual awakening. Stone says: “The colour palette and the materials that Holly used were all deeply thought through and inspired by what Bella is going through and how she’s evolving.”
This dreamlike vision is tied together by the director of photography, Robbie Ryan, who uses old-fashioned Petzval lenses to create an off-kilter shallow focus. Continuing with the analog aesthetic, Poor Things is shot on Ektachrome celluloid, which gives it its hyper-saturated and psychedelic look.
The effect, when coupled with bold characters, vivid costumes and a luminous colour palette, is a period film with a wholly unique visual language.
Zest for life
In Poor Things, Lanthimos, who’s previously directed bleak tales such as Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, is working in an infectiously optimistic register. Despite the casual cruelty that Bella witnesses, her hunger for discovery and connection never diminishes.
“I wanted to play Bella because it felt like acceptance of what it is to be a woman, to be free, to be scared, to be brave,” Stone says. “Socially you’re so wired to think, ‘do people like me?’ She’s not thinking about that.”
