Poor Things (2023)
Country: EIRE/GB/US
Technical: col/1.66:1 141m
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef
Synopsis:
A deformed scientist and surgeon who creates animal hybrids in his exotic London house, transplants the brain of a suicide's unborn baby into her head before re-animating her, and employs an apprentice to record her development. Contrary to audience expectations, she progresses by linguistic leaps and bounds and accompanies an unscrupulous lawyer on his travels, the better to experience what the world has to offer. Having driven him insane and broadened her sexual acquaintance in a Paris brothel, she returns to London.
Review:
The Greek surrealist continues his dissection of the human species via this colourfully Gilliamesque/picaresque fable of accelerated learning. Stone relishes the opportunities provided by her character's linguistic development, from single word utterances through grammatical lacunae to fully fledged sentences of advanced expressiveness. The resultant poetry of malapropism will no doubt give birth to an era of quotation, with expressions such as 'furious jumping' (sex) as popular as Lebowski's 'Johnson'. What it all means with its casual misanthropy and animalistic behaviour is anybody's guess, save that it would appear to be another of the director's attempts to bring us closer to the natural world, man as an Aristotelian creature, an animal endowed with reason. Bella Baxter's absence of social graces combined with her unassailable logic is what makes her lovable.
Country: EIRE/GB/US
Technical: col/1.66:1 141m
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef
Synopsis:
A deformed scientist and surgeon who creates animal hybrids in his exotic London house, transplants the brain of a suicide's unborn baby into her head before re-animating her, and employs an apprentice to record her development. Contrary to audience expectations, she progresses by linguistic leaps and bounds and accompanies an unscrupulous lawyer on his travels, the better to experience what the world has to offer. Having driven him insane and broadened her sexual acquaintance in a Paris brothel, she returns to London.
Review:
The Greek surrealist continues his dissection of the human species via this colourfully Gilliamesque/picaresque fable of accelerated learning. Stone relishes the opportunities provided by her character's linguistic development, from single word utterances through grammatical lacunae to fully fledged sentences of advanced expressiveness. The resultant poetry of malapropism will no doubt give birth to an era of quotation, with expressions such as 'furious jumping' (sex) as popular as Lebowski's 'Johnson'. What it all means with its casual misanthropy and animalistic behaviour is anybody's guess, save that it would appear to be another of the director's attempts to bring us closer to the natural world, man as an Aristotelian creature, an animal endowed with reason. Bella Baxter's absence of social graces combined with her unassailable logic is what makes her lovable.
Country: EIRE/GB/US
Technical: col/1.66:1 141m
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef
Synopsis:
A deformed scientist and surgeon who creates animal hybrids in his exotic London house, transplants the brain of a suicide's unborn baby into her head before re-animating her, and employs an apprentice to record her development. Contrary to audience expectations, she progresses by linguistic leaps and bounds and accompanies an unscrupulous lawyer on his travels, the better to experience what the world has to offer. Having driven him insane and broadened her sexual acquaintance in a Paris brothel, she returns to London.
Review:
The Greek surrealist continues his dissection of the human species via this colourfully Gilliamesque/picaresque fable of accelerated learning. Stone relishes the opportunities provided by her character's linguistic development, from single word utterances through grammatical lacunae to fully fledged sentences of advanced expressiveness. The resultant poetry of malapropism will no doubt give birth to an era of quotation, with expressions such as 'furious jumping' (sex) as popular as Lebowski's 'Johnson'. What it all means with its casual misanthropy and animalistic behaviour is anybody's guess, save that it would appear to be another of the director's attempts to bring us closer to the natural world, man as an Aristotelian creature, an animal endowed with reason. Bella Baxter's absence of social graces combined with her unassailable logic is what makes her lovable.