Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things awarded at Venice Biennale last summer and today at the Oscars in Los Angles: the movie chronicles the macabre becoming splendid, amid diseases and autopsies
Poor Things, spoiler-free – Emma Stone is fighting stereotypes, diversity and gender identity
Emma Stone smashes a corpse’s skull with an awl (which we thought was still in Sharon Stone’s hands since 1992). Shortly thereafter she loses her virginity. Initial black-and-white scenes become soon smash colored. From what could be an archival comic book page in Gotham City, we are transported to a dreamlike technicolor Lisbon drugged with artificial intelligence.
To digest, the old pathologist lets out a belch and a soap bubble from his stomach with a good noise. Anatomy is shown among wooden benches, with corpses for autopsies on the surgery tables. It is one of the first scenes of the film. No spoilers. Old age, illness, incapacity. There is no shame but pride. Poor Things, this film by Yorgos Lanthimos, elaborates on the concept of tolerance for the diverse – and from tolerance it moves to crazy love. May it be this charming process with the genuine malformation. The raw and rough fragile flaw: is this the only contemporary form of culture?
We are either peculiar or unique – both words succumb to stereotypes. We talk about diversity, often in gender identity. Illness, defenselessness – these are human forms that define beauty. In this new-age world, which Yorgos Lanthimos chronicles in Poor Things, frailty is the first form of vanity. As Weird Barbie arrives between splits and contortions to assist a stereotypical Margot Robbie, Barbie is more agile.
Poor Things at the Oscars 2024: in the script, furious jumping is sex between Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo – Emma Stones wins Best Actress Award
A girl with spastic movements and different mental abilities – again, a burp and a soap bubble: this one is the leading role for the entire Oscars ceremony. It is unclear what Poor Things is about – is this just a movie or is it everyday real life?
Emma Stone is Bella Baxter, the neuronic bustle produced by masturbation. As the film traverses an artistic, grotesque, authorial and almost manic dimension, the plot is effortlessly understood. Those interested in literature know what happens when an author simplifies the plot: more attention is given to the dialogues, those intellectual complications that allow one to think beyond entertainment. Plot complication almost always works as a frill: it dirties, confuses and obfuscates. Simplicity is the highest complication in human exercise.
The first twenty minutes were not easy – the question of how to leave the room was pondered by a percentage of viewers – but now, lovemaking is a furious jumping frenzy. One, two, many sex sessions for Emma Stone that keep Mark Ruffalo active and consistent despite his chubbiness. The audience’s attention span in the theater – if the film lasts four hours, few would protest except for a physiological necessity pause.
Poor Things: the movie won the Golden Lion at Venice and it was released much later, in January 2024: the timing of the Oscars 2024
Poor Things won the Golden Lion in Venice in September last year. There was no noise around this first viewing: the actors were not there and the festival’s media machine did not work as well as in other years. By media power (e.g., promotion power), Venice is the second largest film festival after Cannes. It is the fourth placement site-in jargon, the red carpet-after the Oscars, the MET and Cannes again. Had the lead actors arrived in Venice at the premiere of Poor Things, the film would have been in many minds the day after.
Frankenstein in that apartment on Bolshaja Sadovaja, Irene of Athens and Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, Derek Jarman, Fassbinder
A Victorian house in London. A reference to Frankenstein seems to detract from everything – but we are at 50 Bolshaya Sadovaya in Moscow: the red cat answers you when you call him Behemoth. Behind the kitchen more corpses are ready for autopsy.
Yorgos Lanthimos, 50, born and raised in Greece, with an aesthetic rooted in Mediterranean culture. A complexity of historical layers and cultural references. The influence of Byzantium: Irene of Athens, Empress of the East, a woman who went out her son’s eyes, is not mentioned in the film, but she could have been. The visionary delirium that grips Lanthimos in Poor Things is the same as that which envelops Mickey Mouse, between podium and lectern, in Fantasia. At the time, Walt Disney appointed Mickey Mouse to conduct the great orchestra to regain a popularity that was declining.
References to Derek Jarman and Fassbinder are almost mirrored-with different rhythms commanded by dialogue. Directors who, like Lanthimos, have cultural roots far from America: Derek Jarman in England (where Lanthimos now lives), Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Germany. During a time of Hollywood’s management crisis, Poor Things defines a European cinema (meanwhile, America is stalled in a Cancel Culture that breaks its reputation). In her book To Paradise, Hanya Yanigahara sees Europe as the only place on the planet that can save itself from the contingency regimes to which the climate crisis will reduce us.
Emma Stone and Nicolas Ghesquière, Pietro Beccari and French fashion – rhythmic and in comparison, with Holly Waddington’s costumes for Poor Things
Emma Stone appears in Louis Vuitton advertising campaigns: there is a rhythm and comparison between Holly Waddington’s costumes for Poor Things and Nicolas Ghesquière’s fashion. All the costumes worn by Emma Stone evolve over the duration of the film.
We start with Nineteenth century robes, crinolines with whalebone splints, broken or split in half by Bella Baxter’s spastic movements: le tournure, to coulinson in the war between Eugenie Bonaparte and the Countess of Castiglione. W follow the narration slipping into culotte shorts, miniskirts stolen for a few hours from Miu Miu to get lost in the alleyways. Overcoats, volumes, armor. Ghesquière’s fashion is composed of crossovers, textures and softness, shoulders that become crests, amid bows, thorns and Lalique spiders made graphic, like pectorals. Poor Things is also a fashion review.
