I really wasn’t looking forward to seeing Poor Things. I’ve always been quite taken in by Yorgos Lanthinmos’ surreal cinema – the blindfolds and juddering movements, and razor-sharp observational dark comedy – but something about Emma Stone’s pale startled face under those bushy dark eyebrows in the poster was too close to the bone for my liking. I’d read the reviews, jousting it out as to whether a film, made by a straight, white, middle aged man, about the sexual awakening of a child-brained creature could ever be feminist had left this terrible taste in my mouth. Of course it can’t, I parroted back to the various deconstructions of every morsel of Yorgos Lanthimos’ surreal, Victoriana Grand Tour. Sure, I, like everyone else respected Emma Stone’s talent as an actor and agency as a Producer on the film, but this was basically a 70s porn plot, right?
‘I just watched it at face value,’ laughed one of my female friends as I wrung my hands over whether to give up two and a half hours of my hard-pressed time to go to the cinema, ‘I got swept up in the costumes, and the scenery and the madness. I loved it.’
