Venice Film Festival reviews: ‘Poor Things’ is ‘bonkers’ and ‘astonishing,’ Emma Stone is ‘stupendous’

It’s been five years since idiosyncratic filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos had his big Oscars breakthrough with “The Favourite,” which earned 10 nominations, and pulled off an upset in a Best Actress with Olivia Colman prevailing over Glenn Close. Success hasn’t tempered his adventurous spirit, though, as evidenced by his follow-up, “Poor Things,” which premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival on September 1. “Poor Things”  could well reap double digit Oscar bids too (more on that below).

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“Poor Things” tells the story of a young woman (Emma Stone) brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist (Willem Dafoe) who is then pursued by a millionaire (Mark Ruffalo). As of this writing it has a MetaCritic score of 94 based on 17 reviews — all classified as positive, with seven of those rating the film a perfect 100. The film also rates 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes based on the first 26 reviews counted. Read a sampling of these below:

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David Rooney (Hollywood Reporter) calls Stone’s performance “stupendous” and goes on to praise the “nonstop bonkers brilliance” of the rest of the film. “Stuffed with rude delights, spry wit, radical fantasy and breathtaking design elements, the movie is a feast.”

Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) adds, “‘Poor Things’ is a steampunk-retrofuturist Victorian freakout and macabre black-comic horror, adapted by screenwriter Tony McNamara from the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray and directed by the absurdist virtuoso Yorgos Lanthimos.” The filmmaker “shows us an extraordinary, artificial, contorted world,” while Stone “gives an amazing and hilarious performance as the sexual-innocent primitive Bella Baxter.”

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Ryan Lattanzio (IndieWire) writes, “Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s brazenly weird sex comedy is an instant classic.” “Poor Things” is an “unbound and astonishing new feature … Watching this maximalist beauty of a film in a theater, the impulse to pause and spot whatever next crazy thing these filmmakers came up with to populate the backdrops is hard to resist. Beyond the orgiastic visuals, ‘Poor Things’ is also stuffed with fabulous side characters.”

Stephanie Zacharek (Time) explains, “If your head isn’t spinning yet, it will be by the time you get to the end of ‘Poor Things.’ The material is quite obviously riffing Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein,’ but its restless spirit of inquiry, as well as its insistence on the social value of women’s sexual freedom, evokes Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence, too.”

Jane Crowther (Total Film) notes the director’s “off-kilter trademarks (fish-eye lensing, unconventional framing, switches from rich black-and-white to saturated colour)” and praises the film’s other creative components, from McNamara’s script, which “is littered with laughs and quotable dialogue,” to Jerskin Fendrix’s musical score, which “is rife with queasy distortion.”

Stone reaped one of her three Oscar bids for her supporting role in “The Favourite” and is almost certainly a strong contender to now pick up a bookend to the Best Actress trophy she won for “La La Land.” And look for Dafoe and Ruffalo to add to their respective tallies of four and three bids.

Lanthimos could contend again at the Oscars for both directing and producing as he did with “The Favourite.” Likewise for Tony Macnamara who adapted the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray (he shared in an original screenplay nomination for the “The Favourite” with Deborah Davis). Also reuniting with Lanthimos are lenser Robbie Ryan and cutter Yorgos Mavropsaridis who both competed at the Oscars for “The Favourite.” “The Favourite” also vied for both costume and production design and this period piece could well do the same. Add to that the makeup artists and hairstylists who worked their magic on making Stone, a screen beauty, look less appealing than usual and you’re up to 11 Oscar nominations.

Following Venice, “Poor Things” will screen at the Telluride Film Festival, New York Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival before being released by Searchlight Pictures on December 8 in the US.

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