Film Review: Emma Stone is extraordinary in Poor Things lead role

The Victorian-era Poor Things is adapted by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s novel 

Emma Stone in Poor Things. Picture: Yorgos Lanthimos/Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures/© 2023 Searchlight Pictures

• Poor Things
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

From Prometheus to Dr Frankenstein, playing God very rarely works out as planned. The Victorian-era Poor Things (18s) opens with the scientist Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) reanimating the dead Bella (Emma Stone) by transplanting a baby’s brain into her body. 

Knowing only her immediate world, the infantile but full-grown Bella is devoted to her ‘Daddy-God’ — until she discovers the joy of sex. Wooed by the caddish Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella leaves home and embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery that is — much to the dismay of the men in her life — conducted very much on her own terms.

Adapted by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s novel, and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things offers a potentially intriguing story of identity, memory, and what it means to be human. 

Emma Stone is extraordinary in the lead role, initially a marionette-like figure flailing about burbling nonsense as she comes to grips with the world, but gradually evolving into a sophisticated woman who drives a coach-and-four through the hypocrisies — guilt, shame, etc — of civilised society, and mainly by having lots and lots of very vigorous sex. 

Sounds like fun, but the characters are so exaggeratedly grotesque that it’s hard to take them seriously enough to care.

Mark Ruffalo is sneakily funny hamming it up as the predatory Wedderburn, but for the most part this gothic baroque, in emphasising style over substance, is a little too self-involved to truly connect.