Mark Ruffalo

Poor Things, a screenplay from the pen of Tony McNamara (Cruella, The Favourite), from a novel by Alasdair Gray, gets the Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) treatment as he directs Emma Stone like you’ve never seen her before in this sci fi black comedy reanimated romance that can only be described as extraordinarily weird. One could look at Poor Things as a story of feminism. A depressed and kept woman breaks away to successfully take control of her life, but is her empowerment all done through a male perspective? This makes Poor Things, as odd as it is, the perfect discussion film.

Poor Things, the latest film from provocative director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite), is full of plenty of idiosyncrasies—par for the course from the Oscar nominee who crafted a romance (The Lobster) in a society where single people become animals should they fail to find a mate. Here, the scientist belches bubbles that float above the dining table, his house rife with animals spliced from different species, such as a duck with dog’s feet. The shots vary in composition and style, moving from scenes in black and white to those with a fish-eye lens and in hyper-saturated colors.