2024-01-21 21:13:54
by Paolo Mereghetti
In «Poor creatures!» by Yorgos Lanthimos, huge favorite at the Academy Awards, the Oscar-winning diva embarks on a journey of self-discovery in Victorian England
Very favorite at the Oscars after winning the Golden Lion in Venice and two Golden Globes in the «comedies and musicals» category (best film and best actress) «Poor creatures!» by Yorgos Lanthimos is a film that is difficult to define. Fable? Gothic novel? Farce? Moral comedy? Like the creatures that roam around the protagonists’ house – dogs with goose heads, chickens with a dog’s face – the world of the film seems to want to be born from the intersection, rather than the fusion, of verses that are very distant from each other, which is basically what the Greek director has always done in his films, tackling a realistic idea with the weapons of surreal provocation, multiplying the plans and interferences. To which he adds here — fortunately — a good dose of humor.
In a city in Victorian England (the novel on which it is based, by Alasdair Gray, republished in Italy by Safarà Editore, was set in Glasgow, but Tony McNamara’s screenplay deleted all references, often polemical, to the Scottish city), Professor Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) is a master of surgery and anatomical experimentation. He underwent it on himself (the facial makeup, which looks like the result of a puzzle, is a small masterpiece) and experiments with it at the beginning of the film on his “daughter” Bella (Emma Stone).
In the first shot of the work we saw a woman throw herself into the waters of a river, we discover shortly after that she was saved and underwent the most imaginative of surgical operations: to bring her back to life Baxter transplanted the brain of the fetus he was carrying in her. womb, creating a woman with the body of an adult and the mind of a child. And so, under the eyes of the young Max (Ramy Youssef), tasked by Godwin with recording all of Bella’s progress, we see the woman-child come to terms with her instincts, break the dishes, tease the maid (Vicki Pepperdine ), eating with your hands (and more), but above all starting to discover your sexuality.
At this point, a film that began as a sort of revisitation of «Frankenstein» in a pop key, becomes «Alice in Wonderland» rewritten by Henry Miller: educated in frank positivism by her father-creator, Bella has no problems with morality, he seeks only to satisfy his pleasures. Using the men who cross her path, starting with the lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) who will offer Bella the opportunity to escape from home and discover the world.
In a universe as imaginative as the ircocervi created by Baxter, moving from London to Alexandria in Egypt to Paris, among postcard-like settings tinged with surrealism, as colorful as they are improbable, the film slyly follows the protagonist’s path of growth and self-awareness. Slyly because the splash of “feminism” at the base of everything seems made above all to entertain and make fun of a collection of pompous and opinionated males. Which is certainly not a bad thing, on the contrary it allows for a series of skits where the superiority of female desire (and sexuality) nicely takes its revenge on machismo. But it ends up wearing thin when it becomes the only narrative mechanism, for example with the too-long stop in the Parisian brothel where a certain cloying (and perhaps worse) heaviness rears its head again.
What never gives up, however, is the extraordinary performance of Emma Stone (Oscar for best actress 2017 for «La La Land»), who carries the entire film on her shoulders. Admirable when he forces his body to bend to a childish, awkward and mechanical mobility (observe how he learns to find balance), he becomes a true force when he has to make clear the desire that has taken possession of his body, making the most of a beauty which has something disturbing (perhaps in such large eyes) and at the same time “normal”. And ending up making us forget, between a smile and a dig at the bigots and hypocrites, that the film lasts a good two hours and 21 minutes.
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January 21, 2024 (modified January 21, 2024 | 8:13 pm)
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