Poor Things, the fantastical new film from The Favourite and Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos, stars Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, who is brought back to life after killing herself by a mad scientist played by Willem Dafoe. Movie of the year incoming. Bella is an adult but possesses the mind of child, so all her experiences are new again — including having sex. “Why do people not just do this all the time?” she asks Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) in the trailer.
Stone was praised for her fearlessness when it came to doing her own sex scenes by Lanthimos.
“It’s weird, isn’t it? Why is there no sex in movies?” he asked during a press conference at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year. “It’s a shame that Emma cannot be here with us to speak more about it because it’s weird that it would be coming all from me. First of all, it was an intrinsic part of the novel itself — her freedom about everything, including sexuality. And secondly, it was very important for me to not make a film which was going to be prude because that would be completely betraying the main character.”
Lanthimos gave Stone credit for having “no shame about her body, nudity, engaging in those scenes. And she understood that right away. The great thing about myself and Emma is that now we’ve completed four films together, so there’s a shorthand. We can communicate without having to explain everything or talk too much about things.”
Here’s more on Poor Things:
From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.
Poor Things opens on December 8th.
(Via Rolling Stone)
