Poor Things: A life-changing, eye-popping odyssey of epic surrealist proportions

We’ve found ourselves in a Frankenstein era. Next month, the Diablo Cody penned Lisa Frankenstein releases – a new retelling riffing on the Mary Shelley classic. Jacob Elordi has just been cast as the monster in Guillermo Del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein film alongside Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth. And right in the centre of it all sits Poor Things – the new film from absurdist director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose Academy Award winning film career has seen him take us from bizarre world to even more bizarre world, whether that be the animal-turning hotel of The Lobster or Queen Anne’s palace of madness in The Favourite. But no world Yorgos Lanthimos has created quite compares to the retro-futurism of his steampunky Victorian land of Poor Things – big colour, big characters and Emma Stone giving a career-best performance. To review Poor Things as anything less than five stars is a robbery.

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The story is an adaptation from Tony McNamara of the Alasdair Gray book of the same name. Emma Stone is Bella Baxter, a woman who we see at the start of the film throw herself into the Thames from Tower Bridge. Her body is fished out by Godwin Baxter (Willem Defoe), a damaged but brilliant anatomist who reanimates her and keeps her under cloak and dagger as his secret project. Bella takes us with her as we watch her learn and discover the world – her sexual curiosity and childlike innocence and lack of awareness of the societal manner of the time being the crux of much of the film’s comic beats – of which there are many. Put simply, it’s just hilarious. Outrageously so. You know when Buffy the Vampire Slayer brilliantly decided to put the recently-made-human ex-demon Anya into the main cast and Emma Caulfield shone as Anya bluntly and uncaringly discovered the ways of the world and polite society? It’s that. And it’s a joy.

You sit and watch and wonder what you’d love to introduce Bella Baxter to. At one point, she’s overwhelmed by a woman’s fado song in Lisbon. It made me want to unpick my Spotify Wrapped with her. She’d LOVE Rosalía.

Lanthimos’ breathtaking Lisbon

Godwin Baxter recruits Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) as his assistant who falls for Bella, but before they can marry off Bella by chance meets the smarmy cad Duncan Wedderburn – played by a ludicrously hilarious Mark Ruffalo who manages to make Wedderburn charming and pathetic simultaneously. Everyone gives great turns, but it is Emma Stone who owns this film. Her performance is enthralling. When the story feels familiar – it is a surrealist Gothic tragicomedy in pastel tones – she makes it feel unique. There isn’t enough gushing on earth justifiable for how much she smashes it.

Shot in monochrome that jumps to eye-massaging colour that makes the skies feel like moving paintings, the world Yorgos Lanthimos builds in Poor Things is the other lead character next to Bella Baxter. Poor Things is a two hander between Emma Stone and Yorgos’ world. Where Bella goes and explores, we feel the wide-eyed fantasy with her. The film is chaptered by location. When Duncan whisks Bella to Lisbon it’s gorgeous, you want to stay there for the whole runtime. Then we move to the next and it’s even richer and more beautiful than the place before. Poor Things just keeps levelling up.

Bella Baxter’s discovery of herself, her sexuality, polite society and socialism is the most riotous time you could hope to have at the cinema. This film is what going to the movies is all about. An epic journey that feels controversial, provocative, classic and rich. Side characters have five lines of dialogue and steal your heart. Yorgos Lanthimos at his very best.

Poor Things releases in UK cinemas on Friday. For more like this Poor Things review, and for all the best film , music, reality TV and entertainment news, like Pop Culture Shrine on Facebook. 

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Featured image for Poor Things review via Film 4 and Element pictures.