Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest movie starring Emma Stone, Poor Things has garnered an eight-minute standing ovation response from the audience. This is the longest ovation up till now, and Lanthimos has lapped up the praise thrown his way for the “oddest” film and its often controversial elements. Publications state that the standing ovation would have been longer if any of the actors involved in the film’s production had made an appearance on the film’s red carpet — which they did not make because of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
What Is Poor Things About?
The official synopsis for the film reads, “Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.” With a spin on the story of Frankenstein, Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, who is the young woman in question. The film also stars Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe and Jerrod Carmichael. The movie also features a number of sex scenes that drove off viewers from the theatres at Venice because of their inabilty to stomach them. Lanthimos said, ”
“It was very important for me to not make a film that would be prudish, because that would be like completely betraying the main character. We had to be confident Emma had to have no shame about her body, nudity, engaging in those scenes and she understood that right away…As soon as I started saying something about sex, she would say: ‘yes,’ of course, it’s Bella. We will do what we need to do.’”
The film marks the second collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone, the first of which was The Favorite, which earned Stone a nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The movie has been receiving rave reviews from the critics at the Venice Film Festival, and debuted with a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The LA Times wrote about the film,
“A drama of female empowerment and prosthetic dismemberment rolled into one, it may be the first Lanthimos movie in which this unsparing filmmaker doesn’t just slice his characters open but actually likes what he sees.”
Poor Things will next be screened at Telluride Film Festival and New York Film Festival. The movie will open in theatres from December 8.
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