Movie Review | 'Poor Things' 

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For those willing to go along with director Yorgos Lanthimos's twisted visions, his movies will often reward audience members. He's a filmmaker with a specific wavelength; able to draw you into his world with bold and exciting movies. His latest, "Poor Things," is a fantasia of liberation starring Emma Stone in a career-best performance.

"Poor Things" is Lanthimos's follow-up to 2018's "The Favourite," another movie that was similarly deceiving. Both are costume period pieces, which set a certain prim-and-proper expectation from the offset, but these movies are masterclasses in never judging a film by its cover. Screenwriter Tony McNamara (who co-wrote "The Favourite") adapts Alasdair Gray's novel for another biting, funny, and sometimes shocking screenplay.

Stone stars as Bella Baxter, who is rescued by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), after a tragic event. When Dr. Godwin — or God, as Bella refers to him as — finds her, she is brain dead, so he transfers the brain of a baby into her. Like Lanthimos's work itself, Bella is a character of juxtapositions; she's a grown woman with the cognitive levels of an infant and her behavior reflects that. She slams on a piano like a toddler, strikes the keys with her feet, and speaks in fragmented sentences. When God brings in an apprentice named Max (Ramy Youssef), he marvels at Bella. "She's an experiment," God tells Max. Bella quickly shows she is so much more than just an experiment.

As she continues to grow, Bella becomes more interested in seeing the world outside of the home God created for her. She's whisked away by the slippery and slimy Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who takes her across the globe to see what the outside world is like. Through their travels, Bella grows into her own person, beginning her sexual liberation and discovering what she has been sheltered from. That journey only scratches the surface of what "Poor Things" has to offer.


"Poor Things” plays with its visual presentation, much like "The Favourite" did. Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan use fisheye lenses to capture Bella's world, which is colorful and strange, like it's out of a storybook. The production design by Shona Heath and James Price is some of the most imaginative work movies have to offer this year and they transport viewers inside this world.

As good as "Poor Things" is on its own, the success of the movie rests entirely on Stone's performance. What she does goes far beyond an actor delivering lines and creating a character. To call Bella a ‘performance’ doesn't even do it justice; this is an inhabitation. Stone becomes Bella in a precise, highly physical way, effectively portraying a woman who acts like a baby and then experiences growth and evolution for the almost two-and-a-half hour runtime.

When the pacing of "Poor Things" begins to lag, it's a testament to Stone that the movie never allows the viewer to check out from the story. Lanthimos gets repetitive in the middle act (particularly in the Paris portion of Bella's journey), which makes the movie feel like it's hammering its point home.

As wicked and weird as "Poor Things" can be, Stone keeps you invested in Bella's journey. Lanthimos sets out to shock the viewer in some instances, but Stone is the emotional center of this odyssey.

“Poor Things” opens at The Little Theatre on Friday, December 22.

Matt Passantino is a contributing writer to CITY. Feedback about this article can be directed to [email protected].