Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things is a bit of a one-joke movie, though to be fair, it’s an awfully good joke. It goes like this: a glamorous pregnant woman (Emma Stone) leaps off a bridge in an act of suicide, only to be discovered by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), whom it would be rude but not inaccurate to describe as a “mad scientist.” He is able to save the baby but not the woman carrying her, so in the grand interest of experimentation, he transplants the baby’s brain into the woman’s head. Thus, this full-grown woman acts like a child — and a very poorly behaved one, prone to tantrums and screaming fits. And then she discovers orgasms, and all hell breaks loose.
These set-up scenes are shot in black and white, and the combination of cinematographer Robbie Ryan’s rich, desaturated images, Dafoe’s kindly doctor, and the monster under his care turn that whole section into a sly spoof of The Elephant Man. (On one hand, it seems unlikely that a new indie would send up a prestige picture from 1981; on the other hand, have you met Yorgos Lanthimos?) Stone’s work as “Bella” — who always refers to herself in the third person, i.e., “Bella cut too!” and “Bella want look at world!” — is in delightfully poor taste, an admirably vanity free performance, full of food-spitting, peeing on floors, hooting, and hollering.
Oh, and masturbating. “In polite society, that is not done,” she’s told, and she seems pretty disappointed by that information; once she graduates to intercourse (or, as she calls it, “furious jumping”), she asks, “Why do people not just do this… all the time?” (A legitimate question.) But she still hasn’t quite been taught how to act right — annoyed by a crying baby in a restaurant, she announces, “I must go punch that baby!” — and though Lanthimos and Ryan flip to bright, luminous color when she discovers the pleasures of being an adult, the pain quickly follows suit.
Poor Things is built around Stone’s performance, and it’s a very good one, by turns funny, sexy, off-putting, and melancholy. She’s basically asked to age from toddler to sophisticated woman-about-town in the space of the picture’s two hours and change, and she’s always convincing, even when Tony McNamara’s script thrusts her into the most wildly improbable situations.
The dominance of her character in the narrative still leaves plenty of room for the supporting cast to shine. Mark Ruffalo is already attracting attention for his turn as the suitor who spirits her away for sex and travel, and it’s deserved; he seems to be having an absolute blast playing a dithering nitwit. It’s hard to decide which half of the performance is more enjoyable: his initial scenes, mouthing ornately witty dialogue as an endlessly self-satisfied dandy, or the comedown, after Bella has matured past him, and he’s reduced to wailing under her balcony like — well, like the tantrum-throwing child she once was.
The casting of Dafoe as the father/creator is so spot-in it feels like Lanthimos would’ve had to shut the picture down if he’d passed; can any other actor project this mixture of smug intelligence and unhinged unpredictability? (Try to imagine anyone else shrugging “My paternal feelings seem to outweigh my sexual thoughts” as effectively). Margaret Qualley is welcome, if a bit underused, as his next test case; an unexpected Sanctuary reunion occurs when Christopher Abbott makes his third-act appearance. And while Ramy Youssef has perhaps the most thankless role — he’s taxed with playing the constant straight man in a cast full of pronounced weirdos — he mines both laughter and pathos out of his nonplussed line readings and reactions.
Poor Things is gloriously peculiar, sometimes self-consciously so; the aggressiveness of the cinematography and sound feels less like a continuation or evolution of Lanthimos’s style than a brazen attempt to ape the Gilliam aesthetic. But he has a tendency to overstate and restate his points and ideas into monotony, stretching an increasingly thin premise until it threatens to snap. He ends up painting himself into a bit of a corner, narratively and dramatically, which is a shame — had he worked out a few more variations, this might have been one for the books. As it is, it’s an enjoyably gonzo work, and a genuine testament to Ms. Stone’s considerable range.
B
“Poor Things” is out Friday in select theaters.
