Ditched washing machines, a woman’s bare leg, the back of Willem Dafoe’s head … the Oscar-nominated director talks us through his new photography show in Athens – made with his darkroom assistant Emma Stone
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| Emma Stone |
This scabrous and risky melodrama, with a magnificent performance by Emma Stone, is an object lesson in real art rising above social media scolding
Peter Bradshaw
29 February 2024
“You did not see me working on myself to get HAPPINESS did you?”
“What of the TONGUE-PLAY? Is that not happening?”
“I MUST GO PUNCH THAT BABY!”
Emma Stone’s delivery of the many outrageous laugh lines in Yorgos Lanthimos’s brilliant and scabrous Poor Things is cause enough to hand over the best picture Oscar right away.But there is also the deliciously offensive Frankensteinian high concept, the hallucinatory cinematography switching between colour and monochrome, the inspired production design and costumes, the insinuating musical score which appears at first to mimic our heroine’s childish thumping on the piano, then surge and swirl alongside her increasing intelligence and naive sexual confidence. And of course there’s the propulsive story itself, which rockets along like a steampunk steamtrain.
