Yorgos Lanthimos’s macabre and amusing new film has a predictably strong performance from Emma Stone, an intestine-shreddingly clamorous orchestral score from Jerskin Fendrix and, most importantly, a wonderful montage finale – but frankly it’s a very, very long run-up to that big jump.
Added to which, there is the question of whether this bizarre if sometimes heavy-handed black comedy has fully earned its eventual pivot to serious tragic issues in the ending. Does the globally traumatised finale succeed in retrospectively upgrading the significance of what has preceded it? Do these avowedly important images and moods quite match up with the single-joke-single-punchline movie with all its violent slapstick grotesquerie that went before?
