Poor Things

  It's so strange for Yorgos Lanthimos, the director of films as thorny as Dogtooth or Killing of a Sacred Deer to become a household name (or close to it; Try and get the average English speaker to pronounce his surname). But now he's got a bunch of Oscars for a feminist, kinky, deeply bizarre riff on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein*.

 Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, a grown-ass woman who acts like a toddler and lives with a disfigured father figure she calls God - full name Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe, putting on a Scottish accent) and who seems to be raising her as a child. The specifics of her situation are revealed early-ish, but are best unspoiled - like most of the rest of the movie. Let's just say she's a Modern... um, Persephone - yeah, let's go with that. A dead woman resurrected with no memory of her past life, learning life over again with the scientist responsible for the miracle carefully monitoring her new upbringing as if it was still part of the experiment. It's surely not affection he feels, just rational scientific interest.
 As part of that experiment, God calls in Max McCandless (Rami Youssef), one of his students, to help tabulate Bella's progress. Which is rapid; she's soon asking uncomfortable questions about going outside,  (God disapproves, as it would take the experiment out of a controlled environment), disagreeing with her wardens, and, more importantly... trying to jam an apple up her vagina (and wondering out loud where she could find a cucumber). She discovers masturbation by chance and it's a transformative experience, in a scene as hilarious as the weirdly similar one in Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator.

 Yes, Poor Things is an unabashedly sexual movie.

 Afraid to lose control over his test subject, God asks McCandless to marry Bella - to which he agrees, as he's grown fond of her. But before any nuptials can be drawn up, the lawyer God hires to write up the marriage contract (a never-funnier Mark Ruffalo) absconds with the bride to be.
 From there the film becomes a bit of a travelogue as Bella enjoys a lot of sex and is exposed to new ideas across three cities and a cruise ship. Her development is the throughline, as the adventures themselves can feel a little episodic - the shaggier they get, the longer the movie feels, although I didn't really think it ever overstayed its welcome; I was more concerned about how things would end, as the director's philosophy can be quite bleak, but it looks like the source material - an early twentieth century novel by Scot Alasdair Gray as adapted (loosely, from what I can gather) by Tony McNamara - seems to have won out.

 The messages of the movie aren't particularly deep - not just the feminist ones about the degrees of control and strictures a woman (and especially a woman in those times) needs to navigate, but the more universal truths about coming out on the other side of  growing up and learning about the world with your convictions intact. But they're delivered with wit, an impish sense of fun, and some astonishing background colour.
 The world of Poor Things is a steampunk wonderland of bright, high-contrast colours and deeply textured... everything. Lanthimos has always had his toes dipped in surrealism, and here that's very evident in just how textured everything is - a London flat, for example, will have walls covered in delicate china and photographs, the floor upholstered as if it was a giant cushion; Lush and plush! The set-contained 'exteriors', meanwhile, are intricate and deliberately artificial - a feverish, swooningly gothic depiction of a romanticized Europe. The production (Shona Heath and James Price) and wardrobe designs (Holly Waddington) are both lavish and immaculately realized; it's a gorgeous, extremely imaginative film, captured with playful experimentalism by Lanthimos and cinematographer Robbie Ryan.

 Kudos to whoever designed all the spliced animals running around at the London flat, a lovely bit of absurdism to help set the tone for the movie.

 The music is as weird as everything else, partly atonal and featuring a lot of unconventional arrangements and instruments (it pulls out the bagpipes in an important scene, possibly as a sop for fans of the Glasgow-set novel, now transferred to London).

 And the acting... the acting is phenomenal. All major parts are memorable, but Bella nearly steals the show with an incredibly physical performance that starts out all jerky and develops as her character does; It's mesmerizing to watch, a role that's showy in a way that's integral to the character and the plot. Ruffalo also does some incredible comedic work - just the way he waits a bit to say 'Ow!' scored a huge laugh. 

 I really don't want to use the d-ful word, but damn if this isn't the definition of a delight. A bright, big-hearted fable that's fiercely intelligent, often laugh-out-loud funny and always gorgeous. Due to the way it was talked about I was expecting it to be an 'important' movie, but it's much fleeter than that - and all the better.

* Boring Oscar talk time: I mean, maybe the academy is trying to make up for giving all of the big awards to the most tepid (and undeserving) candidate, but still, this is a proper weird choice to honour, even if it was a good call for the categories it won. It almost... makes the Oscars feel a little cool, which was maybe the intention. Fucking vampires.