Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those directors who isn’t for everybody. His films The Lobster, The Favorite, Dogtooth, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer are a bit of an eclectic bunch of films. He tends to put a weird twist on regular genres like love, the period piece, and a family dynamic. Poor Things might be the most odd of his filmography though. It’s his off-the-wall take on The Bride of Frankenstein, which might not be for everybody. 

Godwin Baxter or “God” for short (Willem Dafoe) is a scientist who works on dead bodies. Ala Doctor Frankenstein or Fredrick Treves from The Elephant Man. He is genuinely fascinated by the human body and all its inner workings. When he finds out about a young woman who jumped off a bridge and killed herself he gets the body. When gets it he finds out to his alarm that this woman is pregnant with a baby inside of her. He in turn removes the baby’s brain and puts it in this woman whom he calls Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) after his last name. She has basically become his own child. He looks after her and studies her growth and progress growing up.

Stone goes for it in this role of a woman who is actually a child in an adult’s body. She is still learning how to walk, talk, and interact with the world around her. She is very uncouth and rude at times. She learns about sex and that becomes one of her favorite things to do in her free time. Like a child, she gets upset at times and she acts out. She is basically channeling a child. Because her father is so busy with his job he enlists a student of his to help observe her, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) is his name. This is a full-time job. Which makes him fully enamored with her the longer he works with her.

As well as Frankenstein this film does a similar get its main character out of her home and into the world. She gets hooked up with a creepy lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) who instantly falls in love with her. Little does he know she is a child in an adult’s body and acts as such in his presence more often than not. He is a bit of a cad and gets over her crazy and wacky behavior very fast. His frustration with her behavior gets him to go mad but he tries to get revenge on her with a bad result for Stone’s character. Ruffalo gives a wild performance spewing profanity and a number of things once he realizes the situation he has gotten himself into. He is hilarious in the out-of-the-box role for him. 

Lanthimos uses chapters as a way to tell the story of this woman moving from place to place. Lisbon, The Boat, Alexandria, Paris, and London all have their distinct feel and vibe while also being parts of the whole. With each chapter, the viewers are introduced to new characters which help her progress as a character with each place she goes. She learns about the enjoyment of food, friends’ sex, and the value of and importance of money. These are all great character development moments for Stone’s character. The script, based on the book by Alasdair Gray, is so great in these regards. It puts viewers into her mindset.

With the crazy and wacky world of this woman and her creator also comes the outside world and the costumes that all the characters wear. These costumes are how these actors can inhabit these characters. Especially with Stone’s character. She has so many amazing dresses worn throughout the film designed by Holly Waddington. Also, the production design by Shona Heath and James Price is some of the best of the year. They literally created a whole vividly realistic world with sets and visual effects. It’s some of the most beautiful production designs I’ve seen all year. Together the costumes and production design are able to let the viewer inhabit this world with the characters. They are both brilliantly done.

Lanthimos likes to use a certain point of few sometimes in his films. With this in mind comes the camera work and mind’s eye viewpoint he puts the audience in. The main mindset perspective is from the point of view of Stone’s character.  We see this camera view occasionally. Other times there are weird camera angles to show the oddity of the story. The beginning chapter is shot in black and white to show the infancy of Stone’s character at the beginning of the movie. This was a very good choice. All the technical aspects show various sides of what this film is trying to talk about. Even showing closeups of DaFoe and others to show all the emotion and weird makeup they are wearing on their hands and faces. Lanthimos is the definition of an auteur, and this film more than most shows that.

I’m a big fan of The Bride of Frankenstein and the character of Frankenstein in general. Poor Things takes this legendary literary character and expands on the lore of what could be imagined by the author of the book and the director of this film, Lanthimos. Combined they have created a vividly realized world with a distinct identity of this woman with a child’s brain inside her head. The costumes and production design play a great part in that. The actors in the cast also wholly inhabit their characters. Ruffalo, DaFoe, Youssef and especially Stone all give Awards worthy performances. They bring a level that they haven’t brought before. Stone though goes to a level hitherto unheard of before. She is wildly crazy as the character. Poor Things is one of the best films of the year and may be Lanthimos’s best film of his career but it’s not going to be for everybody. Fans of the actors and director will surely flock to this odd story though. I loved every minute of it!

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen