Movie review | This phenomenal role performance beat Alma Pöyst at the awards gala – Poor Things is the case of the beginning of the year

Sci-fi, comedy

Poor Things. Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. 142 min. K16.

★★★★

Let's take it Frankenstein's monster, Alice in Wonderland, a touch of nostalgic steampunk dreaminess and deliberately anachronistic Victorian-style costume splendor. The taboo topics of sexuality, family and the human body are thrown into the mix. The result could be a disaster, but the chef is Yorgos Lanthimos.

Lanthimos is known for his films that combine magical realism, black comedy and mischievous satire, where sexuality, community norms, power and violence are intertwined. The so-called body horror, which follows the grotesque manipulation of bodies, is a typical way for Lanthimos to study humanity. Sex, illness and death feed each other.

At Lobster (2015) Singles were surgically transformed into animals unless they found a mate in 45 days. Quite different as movies The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) and The Favourite (2018) also bit into the psychology of the body's slow decay.

Lanthimos' latest film, Poor Things, was the international success of the last film year. It has received numerous prestigious film industry nominations and awards. At the Golden Globe gala, the film had seven nominations. It was eventually awarded as the best musical or comedy film. Emma Stone received a nod for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. There was a nomination in the same series Alma Pöysti.

Poor Things begins in a mansion set in Victorian England, where Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) in a princess dress smashes the piano, throws dishes, spits food on the plate and pees on the floor. The eccentric old surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) treats his protégé cordially, but possessively: Bella is a scientific experiment for him.

As in Lanthimos's film Dogtooth (2009), Bella has no concept of the outside world under her father figure. For Bella, who is dating Godwin Baxter, Godwin Baxter is “God”. The story of the film is loosely based by Alasdair Gray to the novel of the same name.

Father Baxter hires a young student (Ramy Youssef) to follow the cognitive development of Bella, who is “suffering from a brain injury”. It soon turns out that the reason for Bella's behavior is much more complicated, and the surgeon-father is Dr. Frankenstein himself.

The twist throws the film onto a new track, where the tinfoil scifi of the early 20th century meet, Wes Anderson's pastel satire as well By Ruben Östlund the sneer familiar from the movies towards the alienation of the lifestyle of the rich.

Stone does a phenomenal job as a character with a child's mind in an adult's body. Still, the film raises the question of whether it would have been more impressive to portray a character whose disability is not a sci-fi element, but realism. Then the filmmakers should have answered the question of how to present disability truthfully, without embellishment and respectfully.

The task is not easy. Sometimes fantasy is the best way to get to reality, but reality can also get out of hand.

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The film is at its best when Bella is alone, and Stone has room to act.

When Bella and her lovers travel around the world, the film sometimes falls into platitudes. The startling directness of Bella's refined circles brings to mind Forrest Gump, Rain man and of Pretty Womanin which a charmingly unconventional individual exposes the hypocrisy of his surroundings.

The men regard Bella as a sexy curiosity, but get into trouble when she has a will of her own.

The film's gaze is not as patronizing, but it still remains at the level of voyeurism, especially in the sex scenes: Bella has continuous orgasms with her face in the camera, the men's backs are seen. The film is at its best when Bella is alone, and Stone has room to act out everything that might tempt the viewer.

The most interesting In Poor Things is a lightness bursting with silk and flowers, where taboos soar like erect penises. The sexual desire of both a disabled person and a child is on display, and society's need to turn its eyes away from both.

There is a dark history of medicine in “research” targeting the disabled, women and blacks, the consequences of which our time is not free. There is bodily self-determination, abortion, suicide, a parent's power over their child, the fine line between nurturing and subjugation.

Poor Things deserves and requires many viewings, from many different angles.

Screenplay by Tony McNamara. Starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef.