There is a lot of “furious jumping” going on in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things. This is the phrase its heroine Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) uses to describe sex. Once she’s first stuffed a cucumber inside what she calls her “hairy business”, a new world of adventure and tragedy opens up for her.
Lanthimos’s screenwriter Tony McNamara adapted the film from the novel by cult Scottish author Alasdair Gray, but the universe conjured here is very similar to that found in the Greek director’s earlier works: deadpan comedies such as 2015’s The Lobster and 2018’s The Favourite. Here he uses surrealism and extreme stylisation to make his points, resulting in a film that is brilliant and often deeply unsettling. Whimsical humour and misogynistic violence sit side by side. Bella is the holy innocent discovering men’s depravity and viciousness. Stone gives surely the boldest performance of her career so far, in a role that puts upon her heavy physical and psychological demands.
