Emma Stone is Raw and Untethered in Poor Things

Imagine being a grown woman and having a second chance at life through the eyes of a child.  Children have a wonderment of abandon that innocently allows them to have no filter.  Would it backfire or be liberating? Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist (Willem Dafoe), Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

Based Alasdair Gray’s 1992 comic novel “Poor Things” is a work of peculiar, obsessive genius, a book-within-a-book-within-a-book that satirizes Victorian Britain’s seemingly conflicting preoccupations with decorum and grotesquerie, all while teasing the modern reader’s own tabloid-trained taste for the lurid

From its opening color shot with haunting music  and a female figure dressed in blue leaping into a body of water where the lens quickly shifts to black and white with Stone banging blank faced onto a piano through a extreme close up of Dr. Godwin Baxter’s face through fish-eye lens – you know you have hopped into the cinematic weird and wonderful genius of Yorgos Lanthimos.

Brain damaged Bella has the mind and behavior of a 3 year-old. She gathers 15 words a day and coordination is unstable at best. Emma Stone goes full throttle into a role that easily could become very caricature.  Yet Stone makes the audience have empathy for a woman trying to empower herself while under the thumbs of men wishing to control her from one vantage point or another.   Breaking one dish after another and screaming in God’s face during a carriage ride while trying to break out, I could feel her frustration and pent up anger. The character study Stone pulls for Bella coupled with the physicality looks taxing and all encompassing at best.  As crazy as the masturbation scene where Bella awkwardly tries to place a piece of fruit in her vagina to work on herself for happiness, Lanthimos placing the lens focus on her mouth was much appreciated.

Bella’s many moments ranging from dancing on the dining room floor, calling sex “furious jumping” to her oyster and various food adventures with Duncan, Bella is living her authentic life under the most unique of circumstances.

Speaking of Duncan, Mark Ruffalo is embracing a career best performance in a “Nick Arnstein” cad vibe as the flirtatious, charismatic and chauvinistic Duncan Wedderburn.  Making use of all his gifts (literally), makes his character unforgettable.  Not to mention the beautiful characterization of Swiney by the incomparable Kathryn Hunter, who eats up every scene as Madame who swings every which way and loose.

Willem Dafoe as Dr. Godwin Baxter aka God is giving a weirdly modern day Frankenstein vibe/father figure while embracing the absurdity of it all with gastric issues materializing into enormous bubble burps. All this while sporting face that resembles  jigsaw puzzle from all the cuts.  It was lovely to see some color interjected in the mix with a nice understated turn by Jerrod Carmichael as Harry Astley.

Lanthimos’ cinematic vision weaving back and forth from color to black and white is quite interesting mixed with his soundtrack of suspenseful music as McCandles (Ramy Youssef ) leaves Bella in bed to rest while snooping  to the wondrous mix of perplexing sounds when Bella leaves to venture out on her own are purely whimsical and add immensely as its own character pushing the story forward.

Poor Things is a eccentric, wild ride at best with stupefying performances and insane production and costume design making this film an exceptional standout from the pack of films released into 2023.