★★★★★

Any notion that a more mainstream following, in a post-Favourite world, might have impacted a dampening of spirit upon the vision of Yorgos Lanithimos are quickly quashed by his latest feature. Indeed, Poor Things is a stunningly depraved endeavour. It is a film that renders the quirks of Queen Anne quite tame. Take the plot. Emma Stone plays a woman resurrected from suicide, only to have her brain replaced by the still cooking foetal brain of her as yet unborn baby. The lunacy is better understood in the film’s conceptual context, of course, but proves no less rampantly weird for it. What’s more, one will be hard pressed to uncover a more visually resplendent film all year. A bold statement for January but impudently true nonetheless.

The film is adapts a 1992 tome by the late Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray. Poor Things is a shortening of Gray’s lengthier title, prudently dismissing the additional “Episodes From The Early Life Of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer”. It’s a more significant retraction than one might think, however, not merely simplifying the header but also marking out a shift in the narrational impetus of the story. Where Gray’s writing largely borrows the eye of McCandless, here renamed Max and played in earnest by Ramy Youssef, Lanithmos’ approach gifts greater agency to the book’s Frankensteinian heroine, Bella Baxter. This is Stone.

Willem Dafoe plays Bella’s scientific progenitor, Dr. Godwin Baxtor, a horribly scarred surgeon whom she calls “God”. Max is his student protege, a budding surgeon who can’t help but fall for Bella, even as he records her mental development from mewling infant to maturing intellect. What a shock it is, then, when she flees with another. This being the dastardly Duncan Wedderburn, played with comic relish by a caddish Mark Ruffalo. Yes, she’s agreed to wed Max – and fully intends to still – but furious jumping awaits in the big wide world and only Duncan lacks morality enough to provide it.

And what a world it is. The film opens in crisp monochrome, Lanthimos leaning heavily into the visual inclinations of James Whale’s Universal Frankenstein features of the 1930s. Certainly, there’s more than a bolt of the Bride to Bella Baxter. Copulation thrusts vibrant, densely saturated colour into her world, a microcosm of imagination that so often feels akin to a dolls house. As Bella and Duncan hit the high seas, the waters beneath ripple like cardboard of stop motion modelling. This is nothing to oil painting above. The texture in these skies is startling, dangerous and deeply alluring. As captured by Robbie Ryan, the cinematographic language of Poor Things feels as much a character as any other. Jerskin Fendrix’s score too enjoys a profound sense of tangible being here. It recalls Johnnie Burn’s sound design work for The Favourite, true, but also Bernard Herrmann’s spiralling work on Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The 60s radiophonic explorations of Delia Derbyshire too strike as an influence.

The coalition of these sensory delights peak in a dazzling sequence that sees Bella explore Lisbon, alone at last. Stone is extraordinary here, feeling her way through Lanthimos’ arch world of wonder with perceptive honesty. It is a testament to Stone’s mesmeric skill that her character never succumbs to the weight of its own construct. Stone deftly avoids the trappings of a role that might have shrieked ‘drama school workshop’ in lesser hands. Instead, she mines a depth of nuance from the scatological pits of a devilish script from Tony McNamara. There’s extreme pleasure to be had in embracing Bella’s journey, an odyssey of self-exploration. Poor Things is thrillingly erotic and impossible to recommend to a friend or family member. Furious jump on board.

It’s funny too. Very much so. Stone revels in this – ‘I must punch that baby’ – but reigns over a comedic democracy. All from Ruffalo and Defoe to a little speaking Vicki Pepperdine nail their fair share of the ample belly laughs. As do a French Bulldog headed chicken and a clucking cuckold. You read that right. Poor Things is every bit the fabulously unhinged adventure Lanthimos’ increasing following always hoped it would be and uncompromising in its own electrical weirdness.

T.S.