‘Poor Things’: A pointless extravaganza from on-trend Greek director Lanthimos

There are films whose plot, characters and the manner in which the story unfolds produce a sense of indifference and boredom. Then there are films which, on top of this, seem designed to irritate and put one’s nerves on edge, so much so that you end up furious at the person who thought it up. The latter generally aim to be original, avant-garde, challenging, purveyors of a complex universe, in possession of a fixed and sophisticated world that is both intellectual and experimental, with playful clues offered by the director in a falsely naïve tone that belies the conviction that what they do is nothing short of brilliant.

Such directors are usually the kings of film festivals, in themselves temples of pretentious stupidity. They may also be showered with Oscars awarded by commercial Hollywood in its bid to be cutting-edge and enthusiastically on-board with emerging plots and themes. It is what happened last year with the insufferable and boring nonsense that was Everything Everywhere at Once. And with the films of the acclaimed — by the usual suspects, of course — Wes Anderson.

And so I get to sound predictably ungrateful when it comes to the latest from the fashionable Greek director, Yorgos Lanthimos. The movie is called Poor Things, to which after toiling through it, I would add the subtitle, Poor Viewers. It was showered with praise at the Venice Film Festival and leads the 2024 Oscar nominations, along with Oppenheimer. And while it would be consistent with the Academy Award’s new policy to have it win, I personally considered its 150 minutes of running time a torture, although I recognize that its twisted script and Lanthimos’ absurd — and maddening — use of the camera must have required considerable effort.

The plot is laborious. I imagine that the director’s aim is to talk about female emancipation; that in oppressive times, a woman, in this case Bella played by Emma Stone, who has lived through a disturbing physical and mental process dispenses with the prejudices and conventions imposed on her gender by men and focuses on satisfying her physical desire. A subversive version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein played by Willem Dafoe saves Bella after a suicide attempt and transplants the fetus she was pregnant with in her brain. Initially, she expresses herself in a sort of childish babble, discovers how to pleasure herself, and lacks any kind of inhibition or filter. Her mind matures, different men fall in love with her, she travels tirelessly, and she revels in prostituting herself in a Parisian brothel while breaking all the taboos that convention tries to impose on her oppressed gender.

The way the story is told is visually dizzying. From start to finish, the camera seems hellbent on looking for twisted angles. It also alternates between black and white and color. I imagine that the revolutionary Lanthimos is convinced that this approach will prove fascinating to the viewer. So much for that. Viewers be damned. There are some witty dialogues, demonstrating that the director knows how to handle irony and absurdity, which might serve to wake the audience up.

Emma Stone is a very good actress, with wide registers, but I would prefer her talent to be at the service of other types of characters. Everything about this movie is as pretentious as it is absurd.

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