»Poor Things«: Poor Things: Frankenstein’s monster as a feminist in a world frenzy

Lots of sex, lots of color, clever dialogue and goth-style images. These are the ingredients of Yorgos Lanthimo’s latest work “Poor Things”. This time Emma Stone is also on board as a producer. The director swaps the English royal court from “The Favorite – Intrigue and Madness” for Frankenstein’s laboratory, from which Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) emerges. With “Poor Things” Lanthimos creates a brightly colored steampunk fairy tale with imaginative production design and provocative scenes. Unlike Alasdair Grey’s novel, published in 1992, screenwriter Tony McNamara tells a hero’s journey from Bella’s perspective.

Prolog. A woman stands on a railing of London Bridge in a bright blue Victorian ball gown. Her head is bent slightly forward, her jet-black hair carefully pinned back. The camera zooms in on her from behind, then she falls into the depths and her second life begins. The next picture is black and white in the old Frankenstein tradition, the formerly elegant woman strums around on a piano like a child with bare feet. Through an operation by the scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), she carries the brain of her unborn baby. Bella Baxter has to learn everything again.

Bella has no scars from the operation. Frankenstein aka Dr. Godwin Baxter, on the other hand, is a victim of his father’s experiments. His face consists of patches of skin patched together. In order to eat something, he plugs himself into an apparatus with numerous glass bottles and burps his food out again as a huge air bubble. Bella, at this point in toddler status, applauds her foster father. Nobody has said a word yet, everything seems strangely antiquated. The fact that mixed creatures made up of pugs and gooses, pigs and chickens as well as goats and ducks roam freely around the property adds to the bizarre picture.

Composer Jerskin Fendrix emphasizes the strangeness of the scenes with strings, woodwinds, timpani and vocals. Often dissonant, preferably a little off track. Through conversations with Yorgos Lanthimos and reading the script, Fendrix gained insight into the project, and the music was decided eight months before filming. Lanthimos and his team painstakingly created the “Wonderland” for “Poor Things”. Bella’s room walls are lined in silk, production designer Shona Heath and her colleague James Price worked with both miniature sets and huge studio buildings.

Both Dr. Godwin’s house as well as Bella’s later excursions into the world were created in the production studio in Budapest. The backgrounds for the scenes were painted and projected onto huge LED screens. For example, an artificial-looking sky in blue and pink breaks through the naturalistic backdrop of Lisbon, where Bella begins her (sexual) adventure with her lover, the lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). While a couple on the edge of the scene in earth-colored clothing almost blends into the backdrop, Bella stands out like an “Alice in Wonderland” in yellow short shorts, blue puffy sleeves and dark, furistic sunglasses. Lanthimos liked to use fisheye lenses, as he did in “The Favourite”.

Linguistically, “Poor Things” is unique. Bella knows no shame. She says what she thinks and does what she wants. When Bella discovers sex, she is addicted to “furious jumping”; she doesn’t know the term sex. “Poor Things” is released in a censored version in England, where, unlike in Germany (from 16), the film is only released for ages 18 and over. Not shown is the thoroughly amusing scene in which a father and his two sons visit a Parisian brothel for live sex education. But it’s not just moments like this that make “Poor Things” hilarious. A magnificently choreographed scene in a restaurant already has cult status.

When Bella hears music, she intuitively moves to the dance floor, where, with her hair blowing loose, she spins in a kind of liberating dance to the beat of the music. In collaboration with the Berlin choreographer Constanza Macras, a childlike, impetuous dance is created. Mark Ruffalo aka Duncan, who is visibly uncomfortable with Bella’s dancing, tries to moderate Bella on the dance floor.

Emma Stone, actually a very good dancer, clearly leads the dance as Bella. Bella pulls Duncan from behind to her chest, her figure pushes Duncan forward, who awkwardly throws his legs up step by step, his arms stretched out like a penguin. Duncan will only find out later that the love-struck Duncan, like all other men, is just a pawn in Bella’s world, whom the self-determined autodidact treats with great insight. You really couldn’t describe patriarchy in a more cynical way. “Poor Things” is the perfect start to an exciting year in cinema – or is it THE film of the year?

“Poor Things”: Ireland, Great Britain, USA 2022. Director: Yorgos Lanthimos, written by Tony McNamara and Alasdair Gray. Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Margaret Qualley. 141 minutes, running in cinemas.