Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things is a Frankenstein riff that’s also a feminist coming-of-age story rendered in fish-eye lenses and cotton-candy color. Emma Stone gives a fearless, physically demanding performance as Bella Baxter — a woman brought back to life by Willem Dafoe’s mad-scientist Godwin with a baby’s brain in an adult body, who proceeds to discover the world, mostly through pleasure.
The film’s design — Shona Heath and James Price’s production design, Robbie Ryan’s cinematography, Holly Waddington’s costumes — is a riot of pastiche. It looks like nothing else this year. Mark Ruffalo’s Duncan Wedderburn (the bounder she runs off with) is a comedic masterclass in male fragility.
Lanthimos is sometimes accused of being clinical. This is his warmest film, even at its weirdest.
