Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Mark Ruffalo star in this mashup that calls to mind both ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Barbie’
“Poor Things,” the new film from Yorgos Lanthimos, is a whole lot like Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.”
Hear me out: Both movies are set in resplendent fantasy worlds that bear traces of real social ills. Both follow a spindly, striking naif created by a God-like manufacturer. And both end up spending more time than needed milking the comic chops of that central naif’s whiny, pouty, clingy male suitor.
The Barbie of “Poor Things” is Bella (Emma Stone), a nymphlike woman long of limb and very long of hair who lives alongside her conservator, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), in a grand London manor. Cloistered inside the dwelling, Bella has all the hallmarks of a toddler. She babbles and speaks only a few words, teeters and lurches on two feet, and needs coaxing to eat her meals without throwing a tantrum.
Baxter, we soon learn, is not only Bella’s keeper, but also her creator. A riff on Dr. Frankenstein, Baxter works as a kind of gruesome surgeon, sewing together various animal heads and bodies to create odd creatures that then wander about the grounds as pets. Bella, who lovingly refers to Baxter as “God” for short, is the product of one of these macabre reanimation experiments: Her body and brain are “not quite synchronized,” Baxter explains to a visitor, having been lifted, respectively, from a deceased grown woman and a fetus.
It’s never much fun to watch a woman acting like a baby — especially while grown men fawn over her as an aphrodisiac — so it’s a relief when Bella swiftly matures into the equivalent of a young adult. She discovers orgasms, and then meets Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a mustachioed bon vivant who can dole them out. When Duncan offers to whisk Bella away on a magnificent adventure around the globe, she jumps at the chance.
Lanthimos conveys Bella and Duncan’s subsequent travels as picaresque, trailing them during a long search for self-diversion in Lisbon, Alexandria, and Paris. And self-divert Bella does: Watching our heroine fulfill her epicurean and sexual appetites, I was reminded of Kim Cattrall’s pledge, “I don’t want to be in a situation for even an hour where I’m not enjoying myself.” Bella, who spits out bitter foods and hightails from dull conversations, certainly wouldn’t last more than a minute.
Adapted from a 1992 Alasdair Gray novel of the same name, “Poor Things” is built on the same fusion of history and surreality (not to mention the magnetic presence of Stone) as Lanthimos’s last feature, “The Favourite” (2018). Both are comedies that reanimate the olde worlde by infusing it with a healthy dose of the absurd. Yet “Poor Things” feels less realized than that predecessor. Its episodic form grows tiresome; and one section, in which Bella suddenly awakens to socioeconomic disparities, feels rushed, even misguided. Better to focus on her evolving taste for food and sex — which the movie, thankfully, allows her to explore freely and at length.
Much of Bella’s education in bed occurs with Duncan, whom Ruffalo plays with big Kenergy, i.e. the needy, blockheaded energy of Ryan Gosling’s Ken in “Barbie.” Duncan works as an attorney, but his job might as well be beach; his fixation on Bella and allergy to sensible behavior are played for big laughs. Those around him repeatedly refer to him as a “pretty face,” and Bella has no trouble using him and discarding him as such. But too much of the movie traces the arcs of Duncan’s mood swings, and because he’s less a villain than a wretch — a pathetic poor thing — his time on screen grates.
Still, there is plenty to admire in this boisterous affair. Of the ensemble cast, Ramy Youssef, playing a blushing science student, is a standout, as is Kathryn Hunter as a Parisian madam with tattoos and sharp edges. All of the costumes (by Holly Waddington) are frilly knockouts, and Lanthimos’s instincts for thespian drama and eye for stylistic detail are keener than ever. From handsome scene to scene, the director has special fun with scale, alternating between boundless vistas awash with color and cramped shots of rooms or alleyways boxed in on all sides.
Through it all, Bella claims center stage; and whether she’s acting as an innocent or a sophisticate, Stone has no problem anchoring the chaos. With a coy smile rippling across her face, the actress seems to understand that, like Barbie, Bella doesn’t belong to the realm of youth or to that of adults — rather, she’s in a quixotic class all her own.
★★★
POOR THINGS
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Written by Tony McNamara. Starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, and Kathryn Hunter. At AMC Boston Common, Coolidge Corner Theatre, and Landmark Kendall Square. 141 minutes. Rated R (for sex around the world)
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In ‘Poor Things,’ a macabre creation gets a sex education - The Boston Globe
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