Poor Things (18)

Emma Stone reunites with The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos to bring us a weird and wonderful, and very horny, Frankenstein fable.

Her character is Bella Baxter. Why is Bella poor? Mostly because she’s dead. Or was until recently. By the time we join the story in the late 19th century, she once again brims with vitality. Formerly a corpse, Bella - thanks to the scientific endeavour of one Dr. Goodwin “God” Baxter (Willem Dafoe) - is brought back to life with the brain of a foetus.

As Bella is (re)discovering life through fresh eyes, she is soon whisked away on a European cruise by the slimy (and incredibly funny) lothario, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffallo) who wants to enlighten her on the ways of high-societorial etiquette; yet all Bella craves is sexual enlightenment via extended sessions of bonking.

Bella is infantilised Victorian femininity, a grown woman pushed by controlling men into living her life like a child. She finds redemption by taking control of her fate, body, and mind for herself. Poor Things is a riotous, absurdist farce with a painterly surrealist aesthetic. The kind of genius film only Lanthimos would dare to conjure.