Yorgos Lanthimos

POOR THINGS: brazen, dazzling, feminist and very funny

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Photo caption: Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Well, here’s a movie unlike any you have ever seen. Poor Things begins as a Frankenstein movie, and evolves into an outrageously raunchy, funny and thoughtful feminist triumph. The kindly mad scientist Dr. Baxter (Willem Dafoe behind geologic makeup) implants the brain of a fetus into the body of a young woman and creates Bella (Emma Stone). The adult-sized Bella acts like a baby, then a toddler, then a child and so forth as her brain develops.

The key is that Dr. Baxter, confining her to his house, shields the developing Bella from all societal constructs, like common views of morality, manners, religion and gender roles. Bella is driven by the most basic natural human impulses – for pleasure and safety – without ever having learned any inhibitions.

When Bella’s teenage brain rebels, the scientist allows her independence, accepting that she will make mistakes while she learns how to navigate an outside world populated with humans behaving with avarice, lust and ignorance. One such character, hilariously played by Mark Ruffalo, is only too happy to harness Bella’s urges for sexual pleasure to his own benefit. Unfortunately for him, Bella’s brain develops beyond his ability to exploit her.

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in POOR THINGS. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Poor Things is based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, so he’s the guy who actually imagined this bizarre and singular story, but director/jokester Yorgos Lanthimos has imbued it with his often zany and transgressive sensibilities. I was a big fan of Lanthimos’ absurdist breakthrough film Dogtooth, but then I didn’t like his acclaimed The Favourite and downright hated The Lobster and The Killing of a Scared Deer. I was encouraged by Glenn Kenney’s New York Times dispatch from Venice about how much he despised previous Lanthimos films and yet still loved and admired Poor Things.

The one thing that I didn’t like in Poor Things was when Lanthimos aped Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam with some overly fanciful sets. Totally unnecessary to the story and a distraction.

Emma Stone’s performance is the year’s most startling. For one thing, she is certainly courageous and a good sport about spending so much of the movie unclothed and simulating sex. But the extraordinary element of her performance is in calibrating the subtle growth in Bella’s development.

Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo are both great, too, and Kathryn Hunter (The Tragedy of Macbeth) elevates yet another supporting role.

Poor Things won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, and made my list of the Best Movies of 2023. A feminist message is cleverly embedded in this brazen, dazzling and very funny movie.

THE FAVOURITE: sex, intrigue and 3 great actresses in a misfire

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Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman in THE FAVOURITE

Great performances by three great actresses, sex and political intrigue were not enough; the critically praised The Favourite, didn’t work for me. The Favourite is director Yorgos Lanthimos’ version of the reign of Queen Anne, the British monarch from 1705 to 1714. Anne (Olivia Colman), beleaguered by her chronic health problems and perhaps the most heartbreaking childbearing history ever, was easily manipulated by her childhood friend Sarah, Lady Churchill (Rachel Weisz), the wife of England’s greatest general. At some point, Sarah’s unfortunate relation Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives to help at the palace, and begins her own ruthless climb to supplant Sarah.

Colman (especially), Weisz and Stone are quite brilliant here. Colman captures Anne’s neediness, weakness and occasional capriciousness.

Lanthimos is a very witty filmmaker, and he specializes in absurdity, of which there are many touches in The Favourite. Of course, hereditary monarchy, which bestows absolute power upon even the most ill-equipped by the accident of birth, is inherently absurd.

With the exception of Anne’s sex life after the death of her husband, which is imagined (and could be true for all I know – there’s just no evidence for it), the story faithfully follows the arc of history.

I surmise that the problem here is that Lanthimos is too in love with his own wit, and, lingering over his own funny bits, lets the interest drain out of them. I liked his Greek indie Dogtooth, but not his more recent work, particularly The Lobster. And not The Favourite.

THE LOBSTER: the movie disappointment of the year

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Colin Farrell in THE LOBSTER
Colin Farrell in THE LOBSTER

The Lobster, which is supposed to be a dark comedy, won the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, along with acclaim at the Toronto and Sundance fests, so I had been eagerly awaiting it for just over twelve months.  I had liked Director Yorgos Lanthimos’ Greek absurdist film Dogtooth.  Unfortunately, The Lobster is a disagreeable misfire, which makes it the biggest movie disappointment of the year.

The Lobster takes place in an imagined world that looks like ours, but where being single is the worst status possible.  Single people go to a woodsy resort hotel, where they are under a time limit to find a partner or be turned into the animal of their choice. After all, in the city, they are challenged by law enforcement to produce their most important form of identification – the certificate that proves they are in a couple.  Guests at the resort go on daily hunts in the forest, where they shoot escaped single people  – the Loners – with tranquilizer darts.  (The Loners have their own monstrous leader (Lea Seydoux) and harsh rules.)

If a guest finds a partner, they enjoy a double room for two weeks and then a holiday on a yacht.  The hotel manager (Olivia Colman) drily announces,  that if the new relationship  becomes troubled, “We will assign you children. That always helps.”

It’s all very deadpan.  As the cast earnestly complies with ever more absurd rules at the hotel, The Lobster is darkly funny.

But then, The Lobster runs off its rails.  We lose the drollery and find our way in a survivalist love story with Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, and then, into a what is essentially a horror ending.  Inside all this mess is an allegory about society putting obstacles in the way of our reaching happiness through a love match.  But it stops being funny, and starts becoming tedious and uncomfortable.

Colin Farrell leads a fine cast with Weisz, Colman, Seydoux and James C. Reilly.  The failings of The Lobster are not their fault.

The first third of the The Lobster is amusing, and I hung hopefully with the second third.  The final third is dark, without much, if any, leavening humor, and the last fifteen minutes is almost unwatchable.  Stay away.