Starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mark Ruffalo

Written by Tony McNamara adapted from the novel by Alasdair Gray

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Searchlight, in Cinemas

A young woman is brought back to life by a brilliant and unorthodox doctor, and goes on a philosophical and sexual odyssey in her journey to maturity.

That Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow up to his much-garlanded 2018 historical comedy, The Favourite, is an arresting feat of imaginative film-making is beyond dispute. In Poor Things, Godwin ‘God’ Baxter (Willem Defoe under thick layers of grainy, scarred prosthetics) has rescued a young suicide, restoring her to life through means which are best not spoiled here. Suffice it to say, the cruelly deformed scientist, seeming to be sewn together akin to Frankenstein’s monster himself, has, at least metaphorically, passed on the favour.

His creation, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone in a worthy bid for an Academy Award), has the mind of an infant, and over 142 minutes we share her journey to emotional womanhood in the company of the rakish Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo attempting an impression of Rupert Everett) and a more sober young doctor, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef).

The physical journey starts in a fantastical fin-de-siècle London reimagined with the help of Antoni Gaudi, Salvador Dali, a dash of steampunk and a good deal of imaginative LSD; we sojourn in a similarly surreal Lisbon with added Fritz Lang; take a Mediterranean cruise to Alexandria; before stopping off in a suitably pornographic picture-postcard Paris sprinkled with eau-de-Toulouse Lautrec and lashings of Art Nouveau… and Art Deco, and Rococo, not to mention a final curlicue of 1970s feminist chic. Meanwhile we are on a sort of breathless open-topped double-decker bus tour of post-enlightenment western philosophy and gender politics.

Visually, and conceptually, this is an all-you-can-eat buffet where you won’t be allowed to leave without having a bowlful of the kitchen sink for good measure. There is lots to enjoy, and the set designs will keep you entertained even if you start to weary of the slightly mansplainy sexual politics. Thematically, this is really like being shouted by an overly intrusive tour guide who’s got his mic turned up too high, and never gives you a chance to engage with anything you’re seeing.

I found it a frustrating experience. Stone is brilliant and makes the whole experience worthwhile, but the film is so busy and full of ‘stuff’ I found it very hard to actually engage with Bella, or really care about her fate. At times, it brought me out in a cold sweat, reminding of moments in the 1980s when a friend of mine who attended men’s groups would lecture me about the female orgasm, and I kidded myself that if I read some Germaine Greer or Kate Millett, I too could be an authority on feminism.

All the same, it’s a fun ride, even if it outstays its welcome by a whole twenty-minute act. About three-quarters through I started to wish that we could see Bella tackling a far more ‘realistic’ world. Lanthimos’s imaginative landscape is so chimeric to start with, Bella is hardly an oddity at all, which sets the design at odds with the script’s dialogue, and ultimately defeats the object.

Verdict: Poor Things is well worth seeing – and applauding – for the care that has been taken over every dazzling detail. It’s just a shame that it’s nowhere near as profound as it thinks it is. 7/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com